


Above You

by orphan_account



Series: The Tides That Pull Us Further [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Boats and Ships, Burning to death, Cancer, Death by cuddles, Depression, Don't hate me Emily, Dothraki Lunar Parade, Drowning, F/M, M/M, Mutilation, Relocation, Sacrifice, Sea sickness, Self-Esteem Issues, Sibling Rivalry, Slow Build, Stabbing, Strangulation, Suicidal Thoughts, Tags Are Fun, emotional issues, eventual love, eventual tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-01-12 04:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 28,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viserys escapes the night of the crowning, though not completely unscathed. Broken, cradling a hand covered in melted gold, he is found by a stranger and his wife, and through luck, through the will of the Old Gods and the New, Viserys has found a life beyond the Dothraki. Plagued by dreams of dragons and the fear of being found, Viserys will do whatever he must to stay with his saviors, and will do even more to love one...</p><p>AU (obviously).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll come back to haunt you,  
> Memories will taunt you  
> And I will try to love you  
> It's not like I'm above you.
> 
> -Bastille

Amidst the dust and the flame of ceremony a dragon unfurls her wings.  
Viserys Targaryen watches his sister melt away and be replaced by the curled neck and smoke of their house.  
What a beast his sister has become, how she has grown, been fed by the Dothraki and their love, while he, Viserys, has been sent to shrink and crack in their shadows.  
Around him the savages shudder and whisper, and from what little he knows of their language (He never stooped to learn so dirty a tongue.) he understands that they still call him the dragon. They are wrong. The dragon does not kneel, she stands, a claw curling about her stallion’s shoulder as her steel eyes slice him. He, is no dragon.  
Two men hold him, twist his arms cruelly behind him, and further back, a golden belt melts. He knows enough to know that he shall receive his crown, as promised. He is no fool.  
“Sister, please, please do not do this, my sister, my sweet-“  
Pleading does not appease the dragon, she simply glares down at him, mercy bleeding from her eyes as she speaks softly to Drogo in Dothraki as the stallion sweeps his braid from his shoulder and fetches the boiled gold. There will be a crowning tonight, in Vaes Dothrak, and not a slip of blood will be spilled. How fitting, Viserys thinks, the Dothraki will break every rule in the Seven Kingdoms but their own, and I, rightful heir of the Iron Throne am not even worth blood on their sacred ground.  
He bears his teeth as he catches the shimmer of gold in the corner of his eye.  
“You can’t do this, I am the dragon you pathetic quim, I am the heir to the Iron Throne, I own you,-“  
Threats do nothing to deter her, nor her stallion, but he can see the slightest shine in the corner of her silver eye as she takes a step backwards, away from him, hand folding protectively over her swelling stomach. Drogo approaches with the gold, drops spilling over the lip of the pot as he hefts it over his head and-  
Viserys is no dragon. Viserys is a snake, slippery and lithe beneath fingers. He finds a sword strapped to the thigh of one of the Dothraki who hold him, closes his fingers around its hilt and slashes, swipes, does whatever he must do, but he doesn’t want the crown, she can have it for all he cares.  
He is a coward, he knows this, and a coward’s greatest fear is death.  
It shall not end this way.  
Gold splashes onto his hand, his skin sizzles and pops, begins melting to the bone, but his screams of pain are empty and hoarse, too high, too broken for even him to hear. This is too much, he cannot do this. He shuffles away from Khal Drogo and into the crowd of wives and women who shriek and step away from him as he cradles his smoking hand, tears slipping down his cheeks as he stumbles into the night.  
In his struggle to escape he hears a scream, sees the mighty Khal fall and his sister let ring a cry of, “Shekh ma shieraki anni!”  
He sees no more. He is out, in the night, among the horses, beneath the moon, finding reins and lifting himself onto a saddle and all at once he leaves the Dothraki behind.  
He races through the night like a banshee, and he does not let his horse break from the gallop until he is in a field of fire grass that bows black against the wind and the star’s pale light. 

*

*  
When he finds them, it is accidently. Or, more accurately, through dumb and blinded luck. When the heat from the desert sun makes him delirious and the pain in his hand pulls at his consciousness with a fevered urgency, he passes out on his horse, and the horse being a creature of survival and lacking a steady hand to guide it, leads him… astray.  
He is woken by the simmering, biting pain of his hand, and when he opens his eyes he is no longer saddle bound beneath the sweeping skies of the Dothraki Sea.  
Instead, he sees the cross-woven fronds of a rooftop, solid wood beams slicing across each other like claw marks and smells the distinct scent of hay, leather, and beneath that, the faintest hint of jasmine.  
“Welcome back to the land of the living, ya blonde bastard.”  
A man sits beside him, tall and grizzly, with a crooked jaw and a recklessly sloping, and oft broken, nose. The man uses a knife to carve a horse from a stalk of wood, blade pulling splinters jagged to make the mane of a fine, beach wood mare.  
Viserys could tell a northern man by the set of his teeth, and he knows, without a doubt in his mind that this is not a man of the Dothraki Sea. This is a man of the snow, of the long winters and the pine trees that grow deep and lonely near the Wall.  
“Now, would you mind telling me how a dirty and, not to mention scrawny bugger such as yourself came across a fist of gold?”  
He has the tongue of a northern as well, thinks Viserys, and he smirks lopsidedly, and sits up in the bed of straw.  
“I won it in a duel,” He jokes, lets the air hiss out of his lungs as his hand burns anew.  
“I wouldn’t call that winning,” The northerner says, carving the hooves of his mare.  
“Nor, would most.”  
“Shall I leave it at that, then?”  
“It would serve you best to.”  
The northerner hands Viserys a skein of water which he takes greedily, his eyes watering up as the cold flow of it down his trachea burns like a coal.  
“So, Golden Hand, what did you do to warrant a Dothraki raid?”  
Viserys’s head snaps up, “The Dothraki were here?”  
The northerner nods, “Aye, saw your horse and fancied themselves a look around, even promised that no harm would come to me and my wife if they found you, said their khaleesi had ordered you unharmed.”  
“And you did what?”  
The northerner smirks crookedly and sets the wooden horse aside, “They shan’t return.”  
“Shall we leave it at that then?” Viserys smirks.  
The northerner’s eyes glint, “It would serve you best to.”  
Viserys sits up slowly, placing his good hand on the crossbeam of the bed, his back cracking and head spinning, “It would seem I am in your debt-“ He pauses, “What did you say your name was?”  
The northerner sets his teeth and pops his bones as he says, “I am Alexander, Alexander of Karhold. And what can I call you, Golden Hand?”  
Viserys pauses for a moment, considering.  
His name is known through the Seven Kingdoms, and if this man is of Karhold as he says he is than he would know, he would know, and Viserys cannot allow that. He left Viserys Targenry behind in the dust of the Dothraki tent, left the Beggar King to the ashes of their fires. He is not the dragon.  
He is… Something else.  
He opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by the opening of the door, which lies behind him, around a corner of the small shack. A woman enters, carrying a basin of water.  
Upon seeing her, he is struck by her plainness. Apart from her dark hair and dark Dothraki skin, there is nothing extraordinary about her, save her smoke grey eyes. She regards him with some interest as she places the basin upon the table, hands resting upon the worn surface as she calculates him. Viserys cannot help but think of her as a crouching cat, cold and striking.  
“I see the Golden Hand is awake,” She says, staring at him, “The Dothraki gave my husband quite the argument over you.”  
Alexander breathes sharply and waves a hand at the woman, “My wife, Faugnan. She does not approve of harboring you, but I have managed to convince her to let you stay,” Alexander pauses, “For a price.”  
Viserys lifts his golden hand, which has now set completely and if dreadfully heavy, “You can have it if you can find a way to get it off.”  
Faugnan’s eyes spark as she looks at the fingers Viserys has lost, each one preserved in its destruction beneath the gold, entombed.  
“That is a deal I am willing to take,” Alexander says, “Now, your name, Golden Hand.”  
Viserys stands, limply, unsteadily, but he cannot sit and introduce himself. He shakes Alexander’s hand (with his good one) and says, with as much sincerity as he can scrape from the inside of his ruined heart:  
“I am Vaughan. Vaughan Tierny, of Quarth.”


	2. No Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viserys adjusts.

Viserys finds that the days go quickly in this place of vast emptiness and quiet. 

Before he even realizes it he has spent 5 days here, doing not much of anything as there is little for him to do. 

Alexander and his wife live quietly in the midst of the Dothraki Sea, making an honest living where they can; Alexander trading the skins of red sliders and the scales of the sea lizards at any market he can, while Faugnan weaves mats and hoods out of the red grass. She is quite skilled when it comes to the loom, Viserys soon learns. She finds ways of embroidering the grass with small but intricate patterns, which she carves into the stems with a needle thin knife. She paints them as well, sweeps charcoal into a horse’s mane or into the wings of a great, looming dragon. 

If only she was as good at thinking up ways to rid him of his heavy golden hand. 

She and her husband have tried most everything short of cutting his hand off altogether, but the most they have been able to chip off of his heavy appendage is a finger nail sized flake of gold. When this wisp of gold comes loose beneath the hacking of a chisel, Alexander’s eyes near pop out of his skull, transfixed by the thin sheen and harsh gleam of the precious metal.  
Viserys swears he has never seen someone so awed by something so small. 

The young couple has offered him a place on their floor for as long as he needs, saying they want his hand before they let him leave. Faugnan is harsh and curt when speaking to him, hardly casting a dark black eye his way, obviously displeased by his presence in her home, inside he of which he often isn’t, preferring to wander the paths in the fire grass then spend it beneath her glare. 

He oft hunts with Alexander, or, more accurately, he follows the northerner until the other man slips between the fronds and remerges with the carcass of some strange looking creature with red scales. 

Alexander is kinder than his wife, this much Viserys knows for certain. Though the northerner can be sharp tongued, his wit is well placed and his humor is present throughout his conversation. Viserys doubts that he is a commoner by blood; it would seem a small lord’s son has sailed the Narrow Sea. 

“So, Vaughan Heavy Hand, from where do you come?” Alexander asks him two days into his stay. 

Viserys does not look at him, keeps his eyes trained on the horizon, where a blood sunset drips beneath the echo line of the sky, casting black shadows onto the fire grass that bows against the whisper thin breeze. 

“I hail from Quarth. My father was a trader there,” Viserys finally says after a moment of lie weaving. 

“Quarth, the City of Color, City of Riches, City of Gold. If there was ever a place to replace flesh with metal, it was there.” Alexander says pleasantly. 

“And you, Alexander-“

“Lex, please, no one says Alexander across the Narrow Sea.”

“Why not? It’s your name, surely someone can make it to the end.”

Lex shakes his head and glares and the sun, “In this land the word A-L-E-X-A-N means ‘bitch’s breath’.”

“It can’t,” Viserys snickers. 

“Oh, I how I wish that it didn’t,” Lex smirks back. 

“Bitch’s breath?” 

“In the Dothraki tongue.” 

“Seven hells, you poor bastard.”

“Least I’m not called Vaughan. What kind of name is that then? Was there a pint too much wine at your christening?” 

“Vaughan is an old Valyrian name meaning ‘the endless sea'!”

“Oh, well if it’s Old Valyrian,” Lex smirks. 

“And what of you, Alexander of the Dothraki Sea, from what land do you come from?” 

Lex finishes his wine and nudges Viserys lightly on the shoulder, “Wouldn’t you like to know.” He walks away without giving Viserys a chance to answer, slinking back into the shack that seems too small for him. 

“Perhaps I would…” Viserys says anyway. 

*

That night, Viserys is plagued by dreams of a silver dragon flying over the Dothraki Sea in search of him, shimmering wings sending great gusts of wind to bend the grass. He runs from it, crashes through the flora with a fevered, clouded urgency, but the dragon is fast, and plucks him from the ground with ease, wrapping its spear-like claws around him, lifting him high above the mist swirled stalks of the darkened fire grass. 

He does not fight it. What would be the point? His hands are useless against the thick hoary scales that are thick as armor. He is too small to fight, as he always is, too weak, too fragile-

Too human. 

The dragon breathes white flame into the sky as it carries him to the sea, the Narrow Sea, plumes of black smoke billowing in ribbons from its great, glowing head, silver eyes trailing the rising waves that bow to the beating of its wings. 

There is a familiarity in the dragon’s eyes, in its noble head and leathery wings. 

Viserys cannot put his finger on what makes this beast so familiar, but he is ripped from his thoughts as the dragon’s claws uncurl and he plummets, wind keening in his ears as the silver, bowing sea swallows him and he swirls and burns beneath the surface while above him, a siren voice calls his name…

When he awakes he hacks away his hair with the sword he stole from the Dothraki. 

He doesn’t want to be silver anymore. 

He wants to be gold.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red sky at morning, soldier take warning.

He wakes slowly, with the sun. Feels the sleep leak out of his mind. 

His first thought is of the Usurper. 

Does the King across the Narrow Sea know that his sister raises an army of stallions and brood mares that she manipulates and twists the Dothraki Khal with notions of a child?

Perhaps he does. 

Or perhaps he remains ignorant. 

It is not important anymore. The Usurper is not his concern any longer. 

Viserys rises after he hears Lex creep through the doorway to hunt. Today Viserys will accompany him to the market, to see a blacksmith about getting his golden hand removed. Frankly Viserys would rather not go at all; there could be stragglers from Drogo’s Khalasar there, people looking for him, people waiting. 

Or perhaps the mighty Khal does not care. Perhaps he is not worth the hassle of a search. 

Faugnan tends to the wood swallowing fire, broth boiling softly in one of the cast iron pots that they own, a mat of woven red grass sitting on her lap. 

“Red skies,” She says, stirring the broth. 

“Excuse me?” 

She nods to beyond the walls of the house, “The morning sky bleeds today.” 

Viserys crosses the hut and opens the door (there are no windows in the hut) and sees the sun rising red beneath the scarlet sky. 

Faugnan picks up her needle and scrapes away the red of the grass, “They will come after you, you know,” She says softly, “The khalasar are hounds. They will sniff you out, if you are important enough.” 

Viserys does not tear his eyes away from the horizon, “And what makes you think I’m important to them?” 

Faugnan laughs quietly. She would have been beautiful, were it not for the years writing themselves upon her face and her teeth that stuck out at every odd angle.

“Why’d you cut your hair if not to be unrecognizable?” 

Viserys swipes a hand through his newly shorn hair; Lex has yet to comment on it, but Faugnan wastes no opportunity in telling him that it was much nicer long. 

“Perhaps I grew tired of mixing metals; silver and gold seldom complement each other,” Viserys smirks. Behind him he hears Faugnan laugh. 

The red grass jostles suddenly and an animal keens. It is clear that Lex has caught something, though Viserys cannot quite place the noise. 

“I’ve seen the way you look at him,” Faugnan says curtly. 

Viserys nearly swallows his tongue. His insides both ignite and contract and all the air burns out of the room. 

“W-what? I must have misheard you,” He mutters. 

“I’ve seen, gods be good, a blind dog could see.”

Viserys turns then, closes the door on the crimson sky. Faugnan does not look away from her embroidery. Viserys grows angrier with each second she does not speak. 

“I won’t tell him, you’ve nothing to fear from me,” She says finally, “But I thought you should know that he will never love you back-“

“How dare you-“

Faugnan’s head snaps up. “I dare. I know love when I see it. Many people look at him with lust in their eyes, he is beautiful, but you look at him differently. You don’t want to fuck him, no you want something more. You want something real. You don’t look at him and see a hunter in the middle of the Dothraki Sea. No… You look at him like you’re counting stars.”

*

The market moves. 

Nothing is still. There are children running after dogs so thin you can count their ribs, people shuffling and trading and yelling and laughing and spilling wine over the whores that straddle and kiss them in the dust and the dirt and the smell of the town. 

Viserys stops dead in his tracks, and it takes Lex a moment to realize that the Golden Hand is not following him.

“Heavy Hand?” 

Viserys does not respond. The last time he was in a place that swayed and moved so completely, his hand was burned near clean off, bones blackened, sister lost and crown forsaken, hunted like a hound by a horse king and a dragon queen, head sought like a stag’s antlers-

His heart beats so quickly he is certain it is bruising the insides of his ribs. His head spins, the world tilts, the light dims. He does not realize he has fallen to his knees until Lex is helping him to his feet. The places where Lex’s hands touch burn through Viserys’s clothes, leave angry red stripes in the shape of his fingerprints.   
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. He is a dragon, he is a dragon…

He is a fugitive. He has a golden hand. He is no dragon. Fire harms no dragon.

“Vaughan. Vaughan, look at me. Snap out of it you pretentious bastard. Come on, look at me, you insoluble tumor.”

Lex shakes him gently. People are staring. Children who run past stop to stare, let the dogs hide in the shade cast by orange painted tents. 

Stop, Viserys thinks, stop and listen. 

“I’m alright, it’s fine, I’m fine.” He says. His heart slows. The world rights itself. The onlookers go back to their business. Lex lets him go, sets him on his feet and looks him hard in the eyes. 

“Vaughan?” 

Viserys nods. He is growing used to being called Vaughan, or Heavy Hand. Lex is not fond of names. 

“Yes?”

For a moment, Lex regards him, blue eyes sweeping over him before a smirk splits his face and he says, “What the fuck have you done to your head?”

*

The blacksmith lobs three coin sized rounds off of Viserys’s hand before the pain of it forces them to stop, each strike of the chisel cracking his bones and grinding the tendons. 

Lex’s eyes near fall to the floor as he hefts the gold into a small pouch that swings at his hip, patting Viserys on the shoulder and giving him a look caught somewhere between gratitude and guilt. 

It is a long walk back to the hut, so they pick a quick but easy pace, one that Viserys is grateful for, as his body is wracked with shivers and sweat and he is grateful that the night has fallen quickly this evening, lest Lex see him weep from the pain that scatters throughout his hand. Viserys cradles his golden hand in his good one, willing the tears that unconsciously well in the ducts of his eyes not to spill down onto his cheeks. 

Before long they have left the market behind and have returned to the fields of fire grass, tall and bowing. Viserys never thought he could grow to love the Dothraki Sea, but he finds more comfort in watching the stalks of the tall grass sweep and bend in the soft night air than he ever could watching a fire dance.

“Are you alright, Vaughan?” Lex asks after several minutes of silence, hand resting on the hilt of his sword. 

“Course I’m alright.” 

“Alright enough to fight the two Dothraki soldiers that have been following us all day?” Lex says with a wicked grin.

“Wha-“Viserys pales.

Lex turns swiftly and draws his sword. Viserys has never seen the blade before, though Lex wears it near everywhere. It is made of fine Valyrian steel, flames carved onto the hilt, which seems to be engrained with silver. Viserys draws his own blade, the one he stole from the Dothraki who tried to execute him the night of his crowning and looks up to face their opponents. 

They are small, for Dothraki, but Viserys recognizes them at once as part of Khal Drogo’s khalasar. Fear lances through his veins, but before he has time to swallow it, Lex launches forwards, blade held high, Viserys trailing behind him. 

Lex has killed his Dothraki in a few heartbeats, but it takes Viserys longer as he is forced to use his left hand only, but, he manages to leave a thin red stripe on the Dothraki rider’s throat all the same, which the rider clutches feebly, blood spilling between his fingers as he collapses. 

“My, my, Heavy Hand, what a price there must be on your head. These are Khal Drogo’s riders.”

Viserys wipes some spatter from his face absently, “Not thinking of giving me up to him, are you?” 

Lex laughs breathlessly, slipping his sword back into its sheath

“Oi, where’d you get that sword? It’s a fine blade.”

Lex, pats a hand on Viserys’s shoulder. 

“I won it in a duel.”


	4. Ghosts

By the time they get back to the hut, Viserys has bitten all of his fingernails off. 

They have found him.

Lex says little, jokes and prods him, makes light of the killing and wears the braids of the Dothraki around his belt like trophies. 

But Viserys is in no joking mood. When the Dothraki men they killed do not return, someone will come back and find them, the Dothraki take care of their herd. They will not find them, or, if they do, it will be their corpses, rotted and festering in the fronds of the red grass, faces gnawed off by the sand gliders that Lex hunts so well. 

The moon whispers a wind across the grass plains, tall above Viserys’s head, even a good foot above Lex’s. Lex is tall, for certain, but not so tall as to see over the Dothraki Sea. It has been many days since Viserys has seen over top of the bowing fronds that glow black beneath the night.

“What will Faugnan say, when you return bloody and bruised?” Viserys asks, quietly, keeping his eyes on the watching moon. 

Lex ponders for a moment, blinking dolefully, before saying, “She does not like it when I bring ghosts home with me.” 

“She doesn’t like much does she?” 

“She doesn’t like that I let you stay.” 

Viserys expected as much.

“Do you know why?” He asks quietly. He has yet to see Lex’s temper, but he knows that must hide inside him and Viserys would rather not break the steel coating that hides the well-kept rage that swirls deep within his bones. 

“Because you are a ghost, Vaughan Heavy Hand, a specter if I have ever seen.” 

Viserys does not hear a smirk in the darkness.

“What makes me a ghost, Alexander of the Dothraki Sea?” 

Lex slows, sighs heavily and brushes his shoulder against Viserys’s accidentally. 

“You keep a part of yourself carefully tucked away. Furled like a raven’s wing somewhere deep inside of you and it hollows you out and pulls you into the dirt. I may not know what it is, and you may never tell me. But know this Vaughan Heavy Hand,” Lex spreads his fingers out in a fan on Viserys’s shoulder, “I am friends with many old ghosts.”

"Why are you being so nice to me?" He asks. No one has ever been this kind to him. Whether Lex is in it for the hand of gold or not, his kindness stretches as far as the red grass, beyond the sands and past the narrow sea. 

"Because we are all ghosts in one way or another." 

"Even you?"

Lex laughs quietly, "Yes, Heavy Hand. Even me."

*

The hut is alight with flicker and smoke when they finally trudge back. Viserys feels heavy beneath the night, and whips his head around at every rustle and quiver in the grass. The Dothraki are masters of stealth when they put their horses out to pasture. 

As they approach the hut, the light from the fire and weeping candles inside casts pale shadows onto their tunics. Viserys sees that Lex is covered near head to toe in blood. It dries black on his cheeks and cakes in his thick brown hair so that it sticks up in dark spears. 

Viserys himself is less soaked, but small droplets of blood still stain him with their spatter marks. 

As they enter the home, Faugnan’s face falls. 

“How many ghosts do you carry with you?” She asks, looking them over from her place by the fire. She paints a black sea onto a yellowing shawl. She is blank, expressionless as it often is. 

“Faugnan-“

“How many?” 

“Please, they attacked us.”

She glares daggers at Viserys, and Viserys believes with his whole heart that is you give a dragon a human face it would be Faugnan’s in this moment.

“No,” She spits, “They attacked him, but here you stand, trading one ghost for another and bringing them back to my home."

"Would you rather I leave him to die?" Lex says, quietly, bashfully. 

"Perhaps." She says. 

Viserys raises a hand and steps into the house some more, "You forget, I can take care of myself. I have ghosts that follow me too." 

Lex pales, looks to the side, stares right through Viserys before saying, as if his throat is filled with frost-

"But only I carry the ghosts of the white walkers."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once you ring a bell, it is near impossible to un-ring it.

In the end, Faugnan makes them sleep outside, with all their ghosts.

The night clings to Viserys’s skin like a thick rain, the darkness impenetrable save for the weak glow of the cabin, which shines like a flame in the loneliness of the Dothraki Sea. As they are pushed into the darkness by a hasty Faugnan, Lex tries to reason with her.

Not for fear of sleeping among the creatures of the fire grass (the creatures, apparently, never go near the house in the sea), but for fear that her wrath may stretch well into tomorrow night as well, and that they will be discovered by any venturing Dothraki, their throats slit, their dreams the last things they will ever see.

But Lex’s charm does nothing to sway her, and she slams the door in his face. The last thing they see of her is an angry glare, her mouth a thin line as she forces them out into the cold. There is only a heartbeat of silence until…

“Your _bitch_ of a wife needs to learn her place.”

It is out before Viserys can stop it, rolling off his tongue like a stone. The look on Lex’s face is one of complete and utter shock, mixed with indignation and the icy flows of rage rising to very near the surface of his armored face. In the already dim light, the shadows lengthen on Lex’s face, casting him in a boiling, angry darkness.

“Careful Golden Hand, we would not want to wake the Walkers…”

“Damn your Walkers. Damn your wife and damn your stupid ghosts. We are men, she cannot treat us like boys!” Viserys spits, his golden hand throbbing.

“She has every right to give commands as I do. You however, have no such say in these matters.”

Lex’s calmness and patience makes the situation all the more vexing. The least he could do is grant Viserys the energy to shout, to become angry. But this bubbling, churning anger that refuses to manifest itself is all the more infuriating, and terrifying.

Despite spending several weeks in his company, Viserys believes he knows more about the dark side of the moon than the man who stands cloaked in shadow and haunted by ghosts before him for the Northerner never speaks of his past, never speaks of who he is or how he came to the sun beaten sea of the horse worshippers.

“I have more right than any of you!” Viserys nearly flinches as he says the words, for they have become a foreign language to him, his old habits falling out of fashion slowly until he hardly recognizes the voice that speaks.

“And what gives you so much right? Your golden hand? Your deft tongue? For I have met men the likes of which you could never dream-“

“My father sat upon the Iron Throne you petulant swine! The likes of him will scatter themselves through history thousands of years after his bones are but a memory. Oh, and what a great man he was… My father raised dragons in place of sons, cast his children to the side and traded our skin for scales and wings pulled taut as silk. I have a right over everything for I am the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, I am the last living son of the Mad King, so be careful what you say Alexander of the Dothraki Sea, for I doubt you’d want to wake the dr-“Viserys stops halfway through the word he has said so many times he often forgot it was not his name.

He is not a dragon. He is a broken man in the middle of nowhere; a heavy hand and a soiled name all he has left.

The look on Lex’s face is cold. Is empty. He says nothing, but his face pales considerably in the half-light.

Viserys has never heard his heart beat so loudly. He feels he shall have bruises on the insides of his ribs from where it has thrown itself against them.

For a long and straining moment, the two men simply stand and regard each other. One sees a man he thought he knew. The other sees careful calculation burn like a coal behind the other’s eyes.

“I was a lord’s son in Karhold. My father, Gods take him from this earth, was the most tyrannical person I had ever known to walk the Seven Kingdoms. He beat my brothers and I for sport. There is scarce a bone in my body that I do not remember aching. I thought he could not be any worse until one long night he went hunting, took to the night and did not return for two days. When at last he returned, he brought with him the corpse of a young girl, and fed it to us. It was then that I remembered I had never asked what he was hunting for. I took the Black a week later. I lived in the shadow of the Wall, took the cold into my bones and stood watch with my brothers deep into the night. For years I knew nothing of true warmth, took no wife and prayed to no gods. But then we were sent Beyond the Wall, to search for our brothers who had gone missing. And it was then that I saw _them._ The Walkers. With their iced hearts and frosted eyes, there was no escape from their touch. For they are winter. They are the cold. They slaughtered my brothers with such vehement disinterest I swore my father was a mouse in their shadow. They consumed all, as the cold often does. So I fled, flame in hand, killed as many as I could before reaching the coast, where the warmth melted their hands and they could no longer touch me.

I boarded a ship that was headed across the Narrow Sea, and though the heat was nearly too much to bear, my bones still bore the scars the cold left on them. I am cold, Golden Hand. I am always so cold. The North has devoured me and I shall never be myself again. But I make a decent life here. I hunt and I sell my pelts and I live with my wife on the moors. It is a good life. But it is a cold life. And one I would not trade for anything.”

For a moment Viserys simply stands there, in the dark, listening to the ringing silence that follows Lex’s story.

“Well,” Lex says briskly, as if he has simply forgotten their argument all together, “I suppose it is about time I’d introduced myself.”

He extends his hand, his smirk a careful reminder of his kindness (of all the people Viserys has met in all his years, the man standing before him is the kindest). Viserys takes the hand in his good one, warily, despite feeling safe.

“I am Alexander of Karhold.”

Viserys feels his courage gather beneath his heart.

“I am Viserys Targaryen, son of Aegon Targaryen, and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.” 

Viserys can see Lex smirk even in the darkness as he sits down in the dust, head leaning back to stare longingly up at the stars.

“Tell me a story, Viserys Heavy Hand. Tell me your story.”

Viserys sits beside him, their shoulders brushing.

“Where should I begin?”

A sigh meets the night, “With the beginning, however early it comes or how far away it stretches.”

“It is an awfully long story. Are you sure you want to hear it all?”

“The night is dark and full of terrors, Heavy Hand. Perhaps your never ending voice will chase a few of them away.”

 

So Viserys tells him.

He tells him about the skulls that stood like soldiers above the piers in the throne room, how the smoke curled around their bleached teeth.

He told him of the fires that billowed and scorched across King’s Landing, of how he took to the tunnels, his sister in his arms, of how he fled.

He told him of growing up by the sea, told him of the canopy of trees that never grew and never withered, the way their leaves used to lull him to sleep when the full moon rose above the basking waves.

He told him about his sister.

He told him of how she did no wrong.

And, at last he told him of how she betrayed him, let her stallion take his hand, let the dust his horse kicked up take his pride and how, finally, he let his dragon die.

 

It is only when Viserys has finished his story that he realizes Lex is snoring softly, his weight heavy against his shoulder…

Viserys falls asleep listening to Lex's breaths and the rustling of the fire grass, and for a moment, for one glistening moment, Viserys thinks he is home. At last.


	6. Take This From Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've sort of realized that I've started picturing Lex as looking very much like Michael Fassbender. It's just a personal thing, but if any of you want to kind of... I don't know, picture him better, that's who he's modelled after.

Viserys sometimes forgets he has lost a hand. It seems like such a small loss compared to all that he has gained. And after all, it is not like the hand is completely gone; it still weighs heavy on his arm, still pains him every day (though the pain lessens with each waking moment). Sometimes Viserys even believes that he could enjoy life with only his left hand.

But there are days when the gods, see fit to curse him even more.

Some days the pain is so great he can scarce speak without a whimper. It is days like this when all he can do is lie outside in the sun and ride through the pain. Lex tries to help him, tells him stories about beasts beyond the wall (“The giants, Vaug- I mean, Viserys- the giants were incredible.”) but Faugnan is less understanding about his pain.

Viserys has often heard them arguing about him, and his insides warm as he hears Lex defending him.

“What is the point of him if he can do nothing for us?” Faugnan snips one day.

“He has given us riches we could never dream of, my dear. Surely he can have this day to himself.”

“It is not only this day he has stolen.”

“He steals nothing, my love.”

“He steals more from me each passing day than you could ever understand.”

Lex often drops the subject there and then, afraid, Viserys thinks, of discovering what the Golden Hand steals from his wife.

Yes, Faugnan shall never be happy on the days Viserys takes for his pain.

But she needn’t worry any longer.

XxX

 

It happened just before dawn. No one knew what spurred it, no one knew how it came about. But they would never forget it.

Viserys woke in the heat of the night with a scream, his voice grating through the Dothraki Sea and making the fire grass tremble.

_My hand,_ he thought between the waves of agony that stretched and slithered up his arm, _somebody put the fire out._

Lex is by his side in a moment, yelling over Viserys, trying to assess the situation, cooing soft things into his ear to try and calm him. Faugnan stands far back, arms wrapped around her chest protectively. Viserys locks eyes with her for a moment, and even through the darkness he can see her hatred, though it is tinged and stained with the faintest bit of worry. This only lasts for a moment before Viserys throws his head back and screams like a banshee into the night.

“Vaughan, Vaughan, breathe you insipid bastard, breathe,” Lex growls.

And Viserys does, heaves great lungfuls of crisp night air before he mutters, “My hand… Cut it off, just take it, it hurts, take it, I want it to stop, please, just take it…”

“No, Vaughan, you need your hand, just think this through-“

“Cut it off,” Viserys snarls, voice cold and dark, “or I will.”

The cabin stills for a moment, not a sound to echo through the night but for the swishing of the grass and the heavy breathing of the pained.

Through the darkness, Viserys can see Alexander Karstark of the Night’s Watch struggle with the decision.

But he decides quickly. He hefts his broadsword onto his lap, and asks one more time; are you sure?

“Do it,” Viserys bites out, “Do it quickly.”

Viserys does not see the blade crash down. But he feels it, feels it deep within his bones. He expected it to hurt more than it did. That does not mean to say that it did not hurt, only that he was not conscious long enough to feel the full effects of the dismemberment.

He has known for some time that he has no tolerance for pain of any sort, so when the darkness claims him once again he is nothing short of grateful, for to be swallowed by this sense of unfeeling is the closest thing he has felt, in a long time, to peace.

There is no time in the darkness, no feeling. He is alone for gods know how long.

When he finally rouses, it is still dark out. Or, it is a different kind of darkness, another night's shade.

He can tell. This night feels different, feels...foreign. No, it is not the night that feels foreign.

It is the pain.

It is not the dull, internal pain that set itself deep within his bones like his golden hand first did.

This is a subtle burning, completely superficial and only skin deep.

Part of him believes it is refreshing, to feel something different, something new.

Another part of him finds it sick, how used to suffering he has become, how he simply accepts it now like some common whore. He used to be thin and strong, was a mighty warrior with long silver hair and an army at his back.

Now... He has nothing. He is nothing. All his possessions, his power, stolen from him by a sister he once thought loved him.

He regards a flickering candle briefly before slipping back to the darkness and away from the thoughts of betrayal and power.

He wakes to the sun. And to Faugnan. To her soft face and softer hands dabbing away the sweat that shines like scales on his arms. For a moment he is captivated by her, stares as though she is the most curious thing he has ever seen. He is not all himself just yet. Bits of himself are still dragging themselves out of the darkness, but he is here enough to know that this is out of character for the woman who makes patronising him somewhat of a career choice.

“Well, I wouldn’t quite say it’s all I do with my time, but I do make it a habit,” Faugnan says with a silken smile.

It occurs to Viserys quite suddenly that he had been speaking out loud the entire time.

He swallows heavily before looking down at his hand, or, what was once his hand, only to find it covered heavily in bandages.

“Didn’t think you’d want to see that,” Faugnan says quietly, “Thought it might…disturb you.”

Viserys’s chest heaves as he chuckles, “Very little fazes me now.”

“Love does.”

“Doesn’t it faze us all?”

“Only those who do not deserve it.”

Viserys looks at her, eyebrows furrowing, “And how am I any less deserving of him than you?”

Faugnan shakes her head loosely before staring at him with an unusual intensity, “I know who you are Viserys Targaryen. What you’ve done. Who your ghosts are.”

His heart stills. His arm aches. His mind goes blank.

“H-How long?” He manages feebly.

“Since the beginning. I have listened to the whispers of the mighty Khal Drogo’s wife, caught whispers of her brother who stalked the red grass looking for a crown he did not deserve. I heard of his crowning, his escape and, of course his golden hand. I knew you the second my husband dragged you through our door. But I let you stay.”

“Why?”

Faugnan returns to her chiselled mask of unreadable distaste and says, “Because I thought he needed a friend. He is so often alone with his thoughts that he used to go weeks without speaking. I gave him so little the first weeks of our marriage that he assumed I could never give him anything at all. But I grew to love him, and he grew to love me in his own distant way, but even then he held me at a distance. I let you into my house because I thought that, perhaps, fixing something would be good for him.”

Viserys glared at her, “And what made you so sure I needed fixing? Or that he could fix me?”

“Because your sister is the most loved Khaleesi that has ever graced Vaes Dothrak. They will sing songs of her years after she is dead, of her son, The Stallion That Mounts The World. Any sibling would be broken compared to her. Had I known you would have fallen in love with my husband, I would have let you rot in the grass forests. Had I known how much you would have changed him I would have killed you myself. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for that man, nothing. He is my sun, and my moon. I would kill for him. I would turn armies away from our door just so he would look at me, just for one second, the way he looks at you.”

And then she begins unravelling the bandages. Slowly, taking great care to expose his bloodied, burnt flesh (they burned it to stave off any festering).

The sight of his arm lacking a hand sends a wave of nausea shooting through Viserys’s stomach. He hardly realizes that, at the sight of it, burned black, blood bubbled and dark up along his arm that the darkness is encroaching upon him again.

The last thing he hears before he closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him is the sound of Lex opening the cabin door and calling, “How is he?”

And then all there is is blackness.

And silence.


	7. Chapter 7

Viserys sleeps two days away. For two suns, Lex barely speaks, spends most of his time in the fire grass searching for absolution and answers. He goes into town one day, fetches milk of the poppy for the man who mumbles in his house and some fine wine for his wife who tends to the wounded.

He realizes as he trudges back to the wasteland how far he has life has come in just a few months. He has gained a friend, something he seldom even dreamed he would have. A friend who made them rich with gold by giving up his flesh, a friend who could one day, feasibly rule the Seven Kingdoms-

A friend with the blood of dragons coursing through his veins.

Alexander Karstark has become friends with the son of the Mad King, and, in truth the rightful king of Westeros.

Before they cut off Viserys’s golden hand, they had talked about his right to the throne.

“But in theory-“Lex had said, “You could saunter into Westeros and take the crown.”

Viserys had stared at him incredulously, eyebrows furrowing, “I’d be killed the second I got on a ship. The Usurper has been searching for my head since I was a child. His spies stretch across every sea, through every field and past every kingdom from here until the edge of the world. I’d have no chance of ever getting to Westeros, let alone the opportunity to just saunter in and snatch the crown from his great awful head.”

“But if the Usurper has spies everywhere, how come he hasn’t found you here?” Lex gestured around them; they were hunting together, as they often do, though Viserys often wondered out loud why they talked so much if their prey is the kind that needed to be stalked, “We aren’t exactly the picture of hidden. People walk up our road all the time and I have yet to see anyone make an attempt on your little life.”

Viserys had smirked lightly, “Perhaps all of his spies are blind.”

“Or perhaps they simply do not recognize their king with short hair.”

“It’s not that short.”

“It’s quite short, but then again, it was quite long when you first stumbled over our threshold. I’d often heard of the Targaryen and their silver hair. They said it was as if they wore the moon’s tears upon their heads, just like the moon hatched all their dragons.”

“We never wore the moon. We wore the stars.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Stars die.”

 

But that was weeks ago. That was when there were four hands between the two of them, there was just friendship and long days and slow nights out in Vaes Dothrak.

Now, things were different.

Lex swept over the threshold of his home, the rest of the walk going by quickly as his thoughts swirled about his mind.

Viserys was asleep on the bed by the window, the sun seeping in through the window and shining on his face while Faugnan dabbed away at his face with a cloth. The hand lay near the fire, the gold warming and slipping, thick as sap, off the hand. The flesh beneath the molten gold is just visible now, burned black, charred like firewood, bones peeking past the paper thin skin that peeled and cracked along the fingers.

Lex can barely look at it. So he looks at Viserys instead.

Viserys wanes while Faugnan waxes. He pales and she glows, almost as if she is drawing strength from his suffering.

“Try not to look so pleased with yourself, my dear,” Lex says as he hands her milk of the poppy for Viserys to drink, while simultaneously taking out the wine for himself and her, “You act as if it was you who cut the damn thing from his wrist.”

“Now, now husband, I would never wish this upon anyone,” She says, uncorking the small bottle and dripping the liquid through Viserys’s parted lips. He moans gently, tosses his head to the side a few times before lying still again, “But while I would not wish this upon anyone I am still allowed to enjoy his pain.”

Lex looks at her in disgust, but she merely shrugs, “I am bitter, it is known.”

“What happened to you? I can remember a time when you were as soft as water, when you were kind and generous and good. What took that from you?”

Faugnan, looked back to the dreaming Viserys, eyes sharp as needles before saying, voice cold, “He did.”

Lex blinked once, “Mind your tongue woman.”

“I have been minding it for months.”

“And you should mind it still.”

“You want him.”

“I want nothing but your silence.”

“You want to love him, and for him to love you-“

“You wretched whore, I have given you everything, this house, my love, my body-“

“And you wish more than anything that you could give it to him instead,” She hisses, hand snaking up his arm like a loose vine, encircling him, ensnaring, holding him, “but he can’t love you.”

Lex stilled, “Why not?”

Faugnan’s face fell, “He told me of a woman from his past, one that haunts his dreams. He told me he hears her voice when he sleeps. I’ve heard him call her name before, heard him say that even after all this time, he loves her.”

Something inside of Lex shrivels, dies, his heart hollows out and he cannot for the life of him understand why.

He looked to the handless man lying on his bed, glistening with sweat and a fine sheen of agony playing with his face. This, is practically a stranger. Forgot the months they have spent hunting together and talking; much of that was lies, his name, his family, his reasons for running through Vaes Dothrak. The man is sarcastic and angry, is unlikable and untrusting and yet-

And yet Lex found his heart skipping beats and his fists clenching at the thought of him being with anyone else.

Faugnan watched her husband carefully, hand curling around his arm before saying, barely above a whisper, “But I can love you.”

That’s all it takes.

“I love you. I have always loved you. I could live a thousand lives and never love anyone more than I love you right now-“

“You needn’t lie, my love, I have always suspected that men could sway you just as much as women-“

“Send the men to the dogs and the women to the Wall, I want you, _athzhilar,_ believe me, only you. This man is nothing but a friend.”

Faugnan glared down at him at the mention of Viserys.

“Prove it,” She spat.

So Lex does. He kisses her, forces her mouth open, breathes her air and tastes her. He lifts her off her feet and carries her to the bed on the other side of the room, lays her down and kisses her, her back, her chest, her neck, her eyes, everything he can reach, relishing in the way she leans into him.

He fucks her across the rooms from Viserys, and while he pleases his wife in every way he knows, all of his thoughts are back in the bed across the room, all his thoughts echoing _Viserys, Viserys-_

It has been months since he and Faugnan have touched like this. They have gone longer, but this time it feels brand new and out of place. The sex is good, there is nothing wrong with it, he pleases her more than he allows her to please him, but that is not the issue. He does not fit against her like he used to, like there is a crowbar prying them apart however close they press and rub.

It is not until they fall back against the bed, her raven black hair crawling over his bare chest and her heartbeat pushing against his that he realizes it is not a crowbar that pulls them apart:

It is a hand.

 

XxX

 

Viserys dreams of dragons, as he often does.

But they are not silver this time; they are gold.

Great, glistening beasts flapping their enormous wings around the throne room of King’s Landing, loosing plumes of fire that scrape the ceiling’s beams and make ashes fall from the roof like snow.

There are seven dragons, all different sizes, different shades of gold refracting off their thick scales and glowing on every wall and spire like some sort of elaborate and strange stained glass window. The largest one barely fits in the castle; it bends its spine and curls its neck in order to keep from breaking through the roof, its large, shining golden head and liquid amber eyes flicking over the others as though it can see nothing in them but the meat on their bones.

The others all fit nicely in the hall, away from the walls they beat their shimmering wings. Some are clearly white gold, others look more copper but they all have a metallic lustre about them that reminds Viserys strangely of the Lannisters; so many shades of precious things they did not earn, but were born with.

Viserys sees the throne between the legs of an amber dragon. He yearns for it, he needs it. Something about it sings to his blood and he is drawn, endlessly to the swords that rise in jagged spokes from the back of that great and terrible chair.

How many kings have sat their great fat asses on that throne? Viserys knew once, knew their names and their downfalls. He memorized them like some girls memorize songs.

But he has forgotten.

He slips past the dragons, who are too busy bumping and flapping about to notice something as small and insignificant as him walking among their ranks. They breathe great plumes of fire at each other, roaring and hissing impressively and swelling their chests in displays of dominance.

Viserys watches them in awe; how long he has dreamed of riding them, of learning their ways, learning how to control them. And now he has them, them, and his throne.

He is halfway there now, and as he draws nearer he can see the crown on the seat of the chair, a thin halo of gold. He wants it, it is his, by blood right. He reaches out to touch it, to grab it, to place it upon his head when-

The largest, most golden of the dragons stops moving.

The smallest, lightest one chokes back a spurt of flame to watch him.

The glistening bronze one blinks at him with empty eyes.

The copper one growls low in its throat.

And the silver ones wings still.

As Viserys Targaryen places the crown of antlers upon his head, an eerie silence settles like dust over the hall.

And then a scream rips through it like a dagger. It rings through the halls like a bell and bounces off the walls.

In the dream, the crown drops to the floor and shatters like glass, shard of it flying in all different directions.

Viserys doesn’t care.

He knows that scream.

He begins running, past the dragons who have all started roaring and bustling carelessly, through the doors. Damn the throne, to hell with the dragons _he knows that scream._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did y'all know that there is, in fact, the English-Dothraki dictionary out there in the big blue world? I certainly didn't, but I'm glad I stumbled upon it. 
> 
> athzhilar = love, in Dothraki.


	8. Dream Of Me

The dream swirls around him once more, a vivid scape of colors and lights and noise as he chases a phantom echo through the castle.

Lex. That is Lex’s scream.

He has to find him, he has lost too much to lose him too. Viserys can hear his heartbeat repeat in on itself through the corridors that seem endless, and while the scream, the yell, the call to arms keeps ripping through the halls, all Viserys can think of is red grass. Of Vaes Dothrak. And of how different it feels to be running through corridors of wall instead of corridors of bowing stalks.

He chases the scream all the way to the front gates. He pushes them open with all his might, his two good hands strong and straight; the door is no hardship for him.

It is what is outside that causes him strife.

As the heavy doors part, waiting in the grand atrium of King’s Landing, baked in sunlight and gorged on the thought of peace stand every peasant. Every guard. Every laden house wife, every child. They cheer for him as though he has given them a gift, as though his presence is all they would ever need, as though he is their king, they cheer.

He looks out into the sea of them, bewildered at first at how many of them there are, at how many came to see him-

No. Not him. He is not king. Not yet. Not now.

His eyes scan over the crowd, but he looks too deep. The one he looks for stands at the forefront of the crowd, hand on the hilt of his sword, eyes on the sky that spreads out like a silken sheet above them.

Lex wears full plate armor, holds his sword like an apology and stares straight ahead as if he is a horse with blinders on. His armor glistens in the sunlight that shines unperturbed upon them.

As soon as Viserys sees him, the whole crowd seems to go silent, has the air sucked from their lungs.

Lex is alright. A knot unfurls in Viserys’s chest. Lex is wearing armor. A heat rushes through Viserys.

Lex is standing next to his sister, a pale, ethereal banshee among the light and noise of King’s Landing. She looks just as she did on her wedding day, silken dress floating lightly about her, skin cast in shades of white and grey and billowing around her like great wings.

“Lex, what are you-“Viserys begins, but as his words meet the air, Lex’s hand begins trailing lightly up his sword’s hilt.

It is then that Viserys sees the pin glowing like an honor on Lex’s chest, and that crown that swirls ornately between the strands of Daenerys’ hair.

“You-“He hisses at his sister, descending the stairs to meet her in the crowd that has long since gone silent and watchful, “You need to take everything from me don’t you, the dragons, the crown this man, I should have left you to the Kingslayer when father died, should have left to the fires. Oh, you must steal everything from me you witch-“

He grasps for her throat, or for the crown, he is not sure which. She lets him strangle her, for a moment, her eyes widening and throat contracting beneath his hand.

Until she begins melting, her hair staining from silver to gold and all at once she is gone, and all that remains is liquid gold spreading over his hands.

He screams, a ragged, choking breath as looks merely looks down at him as if from high above.

 

Slowly he begins clawing his to consciousness. Through mist and darkness he feels pain, distantly, a slow embered burn that gnaws at him slowly. There is little in the darkness for him, he knows, but awake brings the pain, a tumultuous fire unlike any a dragon could ever spit.

But there are noises beyond the fire, harsh, grinding sounds that echo through Viserys’s ears. Moaning and choking and rattling he cannot quite place.

Soon he can feel his body again; his fingers tight against the bed sheets, heart pounding against the inside of his chest, head pounding.

His eyelids peel open sluggishly, head pounding and thoughts foggy but the noises become quite clear as he sees their source. He does not need to look far.

He is quite far from them, across the room, but even far away and in the half darkness of twilight Viserys can see the sweat shine and refract on Lex’s shoulder blades as he rises and falls over Faugnan like a basking wave.

For a few moments, a few glistening moments he doesn’t understand. His thoughts do not form in the right order and he cannot quite fit the pieces together.

But after a few moments of puzzling the he grasps the basic gist.

And the fire burns ever hotter.

 

XxX

 

Lex sighs into the bed, Faugnan pressed tight against him, warm and close, her fingers tracing Dothraki letters on his chest.

“Why are you so anxious, husband? I feel your heart beating faster than usual,” Faugnan purrs, glancing up at him.

He does not meet her eyes.

“You can tell me anything, you know. You could tell me you wanted him here,” Her palm rubs the space between them, over the thin linen sheets, “With us. I wouldn’t mind.”

She looks over Lex at the sleeping figure across the room from them, who tosses lightly in his sleep, “he is rather beautiful. His face. Not his hair. It was nicer long.”

“Yes it was…” Lex mumbles softly.

Faugnan looks at him and grins a toothy grin, hair spilling in front of her face as she says, simply, “I knew it.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know you. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. I have known for years that men enticed you as much as women, but did I ever say anything, no. I love you, more than anything, it is known. I love you still, even though I know you lust for another.” She grabbed his hand held it to her lips before whispering into it, “But I don’t care.”

He looks into her eyes, dark and storming.

She has always been beautiful, with strong bones and a smirking mouth. Once, Lex would have believed he could have loved her.

Now the idea seemed frightening.

So did the alternative.

Men had never swayed him like this before, never tempted him. Before Viserys, it was only women. Short women. Tall women. Beautiful women. Less beautiful women.

Not anymore.

Now it was just him.

And it rocked Lex to his core.

This wasn’t him. This wasn’t who he was. He lived on the Wall for years, in the company of only men and never had he even considered that he may ever be attracted to men.

And now?

Now he lay in bed with his wife and all he could think of was a man with silver hair, a hand of gold and of a long forgotten feeling of being whole.

Across the room, Viserys Targaryen lay sleeping.

And Alexander Karstark lay awake, dreaming of snow, and a house and of a man with silver hair kissing him.

And it frightened him more than anything ever could.

He was the darkness that surrounded the stars.

And Viserys was the star that gave light to the darkness.

And Faugnan was the sun who took it all away…


	9. Chapter 9

At first, it comes as a god sent, a shimmering, beacon of hope. 

Lex found it snuffling outside the house, a portly, frustrated creature that sniffed along the red grass that grew thin and new at the base of the house, an ugly black brand newly charred on its haunch. 

“It’s one of Medrod’s pigs, the farmer from down the moor. This one must have escaped after its branding,” Lex said, cradling the writhing, quivering through the doorway, an uncharacteristically broad smile glowing on his face, “Was sniffing out the other side of the house.” 

“Can we eat him?” Viserys asked, looking up from the fire he tended to. He was never much of a fire builder, he had always had people to do that for him, but ever since he truly lost his hand he had been little use on the hunt, so he was content to mind the fire while Faugnan collected the grass for her weaving.

“Of course, why’d you think I brought him in here, to swaddle him in affection? No, tonight, my friend, we eat like kings.”

“I’ve eaten like a king and that is not even fit for the dogs.”

“If it’s fit for the dogs it’s fit for us,” Lex said, placing the pig on the ground and watching it scuttle away to under Viserys’s bed. 

“If that thing shits on the floor you’re cleaning it up,” Viserys mumbled crossly as the pig watched him with beading black eyes from the shadows. 

“It won’t have time to shit. The second Faugnan gets back from the moors she’s going to butcher that thing within an inch of its life and then,” Lex clapped Viserys on the back, “We feast like kings.”

Viserys half smiled, half cringed, “Someday I’d like to show you a true king’s feast. The tables spread out so far you can hardly see where they end,” He closed his eyes as he prodded the flames, imagining the never ending spreads of steaming mutton and pork, cups of wine that never went unfilled, the jovial laughter of the drunk and the happy. 

Some days he missed it terribly, the slow ache of missed royalty, the feeling of a feather bed beneath his back and the feeling of a hand at the end of his arm. 

But there were other days, the quick, fleeting days filled with sun, the days where his arm did not ache for fingers he barely remembered the Dothraki, barely remembered the soft feather beds and the fingers he once thought he would miss more than he did.

He missed his gold though, his nice things, his horse, his sanded walls through which he had roamed in that castle by the sea, but if he closed his eyes enough he could still see it; the bowing grass turned to water and licked along the hills, the small wooden hut turned to a grand castle if he concentrated enough, but still, he did not need the echoing halls, they had never given him anything to love. 

But this place did, in one way or another.

XxX

People waved and called for her, but Faugnan cared little for their gossip and their flitting stories. She had not seen many of these people in months; the arrival of Viserys Targaryen, Rightful King of the Andals had demanded her full attention for many weeks, so she had little time to visit the smallest town within walking distance to the red grass fields to speak with the people she may have once called friends. 

But the time for friends had long since fallen behind her. Perhaps, when this was all done she would come back to the, her husband trailing on her arm like a falcon she had trained to come to her again.

No… Not a falcon. A falcon had no mind, felt no love, but Lex, Lex felt love. Lex was pure, was good and kind and noble and had love to spare for many just… 

Not for her. But she could change that. She could do anything for him, if he asked.

Viserys had to be stopped, Lex was hers, she had fought for his affections for years, fought tooth and nail against the sadness and the darkness that feathered at the edges of his eyes. She had loved him the way any wife would, and yet it had not been enough.

And yet this stranger swanned in, broken and bent and sallow, with a cold tongue and sharper wit sharper than they were used to. And it was his newness that made him so appealing, Faugnan knew this, men find something new and they think they’re touching every heaven known to man.   
Lex was no different, she realized as she entered a small house, opening the door quietly and stepping inside, despite his kindness and his nobility he was a man, a man as tempted with the newness and lust of another as any man would. 

The house was dank, smoggy and smelled vaguely of blood and the rusty smell of dust. There were windows, but they were covered with heavy curtains shafts of sunlight barely scraping through the darkness to catch the dust in their hold. The pale sun that did scrape through the curtains made the many jars and plants shine and glitter with unnatural colors.

“Hello?” Faugnan called into the house.

A rustling preceded a hunched, seedy man with beaded grey eyes who rasped, “How can I help you?”

“I am told you are very good with poisons.”


	10. Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poison spills, shame is felt, and a pig meets its end.

When Faugnan finally returned to the house, Viserys and Lex were deep in discussion.

“He is not an Aervy, that name sounds stupider than yours.”

“Well, he’s most certainly not a Cyneweard. I don’t even know what that means,” Viserys said, looking under the bed at something small and dark.

Faugnan approached them warily, “Husband, have you been bringing sand sliders into the house again?” She asked, smiling at him softly.

“Lovely wife, of course not. Something better,” Lex said as he threw his hand beneath the bed and produced a squirming piglet, dark eyed and frightened, “Medroc mustn’t have fenced them properly; this ones escaped the pan but found his way to the fire.”

“And now you’re naming it?”

“Trying to, at the very least,” Viserys said, examining the brand of the pig’s haunch.

Faugnan glared at him.

“Well, you won’t pick a fitting name before I kill it,” Faugnan said, taking the pig from Lex and tucking it under her arm like a plank of wood.

“And why’s that?”

Faugnan laughed curtly before saying flatly, “It’s a girl.”

 

XxX

 

“For all your crass words and thorny tongue, you do have your redeeming qualities,” Viserys mumbled over Faugnan’s shoulder as he stoked the fire that snapped and crackled beneath the cooking pig.

Killing it had not been pleasant; Lex and Viserys refused to do it, having grown too attached to the newly named Pelagia to kill her. They had not even watched as Faugnan sliced her front to back and skinned her, but they seemed plenty eager to smell her charring body over the flames while they sharpened their swords with whetstones and spoke of the many battles they had fought, wars they had seen and of the tyranny of their fathers.

“I hear the battle of Blackwater Bay was a something to marvel at,” Lex said, scraping his whetstone down the length of his blade, “Ships turned belly up in the water, splinters flying so fast they killed more men than the flames did, said that Stannis Baratheon’s face was priceless.”

“How could they see his face if he was at sea?” Viserys asked seriously.

Lex pondered for a moment before saying, “No matter. It was one hell of a battle, by all counts.”

Faugnan listens absently, but only to Lex, only to her falcon. The beast beside him can burn in the Nightlands for all she cares, this is nothing she ever wanted. The poison is Dark Root Oil, a very common, very deadly plant found all through the Dothraki Sea, and could kill a man in a matter of heartbeats- not long enough, not long enough for her tastes, not enough suffering, not enough pain.

But she would take his corpse over his heartbeats, any day, take his silence over his too smart voice, and she would take his rigid fingers scraping soil over scraping their way up and down her husband’s shoulders, his thighs-

Her hands shake as she turns the pig on the spike, but she smiles through the tremors.

She shall choke the dragon of his flames tonight.

XxX

Every time he touches him, the most common and nonchalant of things, his skin lights itself on fire.

He has never felt this way with anyone else, never known this kind of lust, this kind of love.

Viserys watches Lex pull the whetstone across his sword’s blade, watches the sheen and the shimmer and the sharpness of its edge catch the setting sun’s light.

Viserys, ever since he was a child, had lived a life of riches, of titles and unnecessary fringing. Of flame and blood and tales of wars and of his father’s decline, of lions and stags and the wolves that howled among them; he lived a life of…privilege. Of not having to earn love, of merely having to pay for it.

Here, on the prairies of the sea where his sister abandoned him, he had no money. He paid for things with ‘thank you’s and stories and with the smiles who could afford to give away. He was just grateful that the things he wanted to buy did not need money.

Just a hand.

XxX

Every time he touches him, the most common and nonchalant of things, his skin crawls.

He can’t. He shouldn’t feel this way with another man, and despite what he wants, what he yearns for, he cannot succumb to it. He has a wife, he must be loyal to her, to the vows he swore upon.

Lex feels his hands shake every single time Viserys is near, and he is no longer sure if it from shame or want or some other veiled need; he is no longer sure what it feels like to be steady.

His earth shakes now, his rocks crumble and fragment into the crashing waves of silver that ripple and pool like silk; there is scarce anything left of his shores.

All of it swirls in the churning of the seas.

XxX

It takes Lex all of two seconds to realize something is breathtakingly wrong.

It takes Viserys a moment longer; he is not nearly as versed in poisons.

Lex grew up among the men of the Wall, under the watchful eye of a vengeful maester and learned to always sniff his wine before drinking it; many men took their vows as joke.

Viserys is a little bit slower upon realization; his tongue feels leaden and the air in his throat grows stale and stagnant, until his throat closes and suddenly his lungs no longer move. His hand clutches his throat, scrabbles at his skin while his stump of an arm beats against his chest, trying to dislodge whatever is stuck in his chest.

Faugnan just keeps eating; does not look up, does not slow her chewing.

It dawns on Lex quite suddenly that this is a choice; one he has to make alone.

His wife, his home, his vows.

Or flame and gold and silver.

“Faugnan, what have you done…” He mumbled.

His heart freezes, drawn in the choice as his eyes flicker from the woman he loved once, to the man who stumbled, broken and fallen from grace into his home.

Their eyes meet, the strangled and the chooser. One’s eyes are filled with pleading, the soft murmur of _Please, I cannot die like this,_ gone unsaid but not in the least bit unheard.

Alexander Karstark chooses shame.

His hands are down Viserys’s throat in a moment, pulling his craw open and jumping back as Viserys expels the pig and the poison form his gut. The mess is foul, and black.

“She-“ Viserys spits, face turning from a sickly shade of blue to the stinging red of rage as he stumbles to his feet and points an accusing finger at Faugnan who still, does not look up, “She…did this…”

“Viserys, we don’t know that-“But as soon as Lex begins to speak, Faugnan’s head snaps up, eyes shadowed with rage and the crumbling remnants of sorrow.

“Do not defend me. Not when you have made your choice. Not when you have chosen a stranger over the woman you fell in love with and who fell in love with you. Where is your loyalty now? Where are your vows now? I stood by you through the storms, this man has stood by you for nothing-” Her face softened as she looked at her husband, “You are so noble, Alexander, so kind, so gentle. He will take that kindness from you, whittle you down until you are nothing like you were before. But not me.”

Lex didn’t say anything.

Viserys stood, shakily, but as soon as he regained his footing he advanced towards Faugnan, his hand flitting towards the sword at his side, tongue drawling out, “Oh you hateful wench, how dare you presume touch me, I am the son of Aeyrs Targaryen, I have the blood of the last dragons in my veins, I am the rightful king of Westeros-“

“You are the son of a madman, a runaway, a handless halfwit who cannot help but cling to whatever kindness is thrown his way, you are no dragon, Viserys Targaryen. Just the crippled song of a long dead dynasty,” Faugnan spat, stepping forward, chest rising and falling like a tide with all the rage that boiled beneath her veins, “You can take whatever titles and kingdoms you want _but you will not take my husband._ ”

“Viserys, please, go outside. I have things to discuss with my wife,” Lex said, his voice icily calm.

“No! The bitch tried to kill me, I shall exact my justice on her at once-“

“You shall do no such thing, my friend.”

“I am your king-“

“Aye, you are. But what is a man if not the king of his own home. Please, gods be good, Viserys, go outside, for a few moments, out of respect.”

Viserys blinked idly, turning to the door and said, over his shoulder, “I do this out of respect. I do not take your orders. But I listen to your words.”

“That is all I ever wanted,” Lex said, closing his eyes.

As the door thudded softly against the frame Alexander Karstark let out a deep breath as the final mortars of his will crashing into the waves, as a storm began to crackle overhead and a dragon beat its wings furiously against the wind-

He opened his eyes to see his wife, but all he saw was his own shame reflected back at him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A choice is made.

For one shattered moment, barely three heartbeats, the Dothraki Sea is silent.

Or, to Lex it is.

The night holds itself around them carefully, as if afraid of getting too close, wary of what it may interrupt should it get in the way. The ground dwelling birds of the fire grass do not hum or sing, the wind holds its breath.

The night is a hollow suspension, echoes around them as if asking the man and his wife to fill it with noise; the night is cavernous without it.

Lex takes a breath, takes a step backwards, closes his eyes.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Why?”

His voice is a crack in the darkness, the night splits open around his it.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Listen. He does not open his eyes.

“I have lost too much,” She says, voice low, but not wary. She has played all the cards, rolled all the die, she will follow him to the grave even if he is the one to put him there.

Breathe in.

“And I haven’t? Killing him, did you think that would make me love you?”

“I thought it would change things.”

Breathe out.

“What could that possibly change? What were you planning; to make it seem like he choked on a bone? I could see the poison in your eyes before I even knew you had given it to him, gods, they give me him as a gift and you see fit to take it from me-“

“He is no gift. He is a disease; he will hollow you out, I have said it before, this lust is temporary, it will not last.”

“I do not lust for him, he is my truest friend-“

“And your most roundabout lover. I have seen your eyes on him, and his eyes on you and gods, it is known that you love each other and yet you both deny it like the sea denies that it loves the shore. But my love, it is known that this kind of love is forbidden; you would be killed if you gave into it, quartered and skinned and lashed and made to dance like bears because that is what you would become if you gave into his tide.” Breathe in- “I am not the sea. I would not deny you anything, would not deny myself anything. I would give everything, he would only give you heartache-“

“No he wouldn’t!” Breathe out.

Her face slackens, pulls downwards in the light of the fire that casts shadows onto her face.

Her face bares no emotion. Her breaths are steady, still. Aware.

“You admit it,” Is all she says, “You admit it.”

Breathe in.

“No I don’t-“

“You just said you did-“

“I said that he would-“

“I knew it, all along I knew it-“

Lex balls his fists, teeth chattering in rage-, “I love him.”

Breathe out.

Faugnan looks at him as though she has seen some vulgar shadow slip beneath her doorway, seen it throw its limbs long onto the walls, seen it throw its head back in laughter at her.

Lex doesn’t care. A weight lifts off him, he can breathe again. The shame still prickles in his veins, still chews the corners of his mind but the weight that bore heavy in his chest is gone, released by his words. The feeling is so invigorating he doesn’t want to stop.

“I love him like mountains love to scrape the sky. I love him for all he is, and though it kills me to say I should think I will never tell him. And that may kill me, but gods in their hells and their heavens I bleed when he bleeds, I hurt when he hurts, when he weeps my heart breaks for him. I am his, until the end of my days, it is known. I simply wish I could say he is mine. But that is no matter. As long as he is by my side, I shall love him. As long as he breathes I shall breathe easy.”

With each word, the weight lifts. He breathes in, he breathes out, and his chest opens, his lungs fill. But soon he remembers the reason for his proclamation, the reason he stands alone with his wife by a dying fire and the reason the weight is gone.

In a voice cold as ice, he says, face slack and void of emotion, “And you tried to take him from me.”

Faugnan simply nods.

“Why?”

She wastes no time with her answer. Her tongue is quick, is deft, she knows exactly how to use it to make him hurt.

“Because you two are the most wretched things I have ever seen walk this earth, what with your forbidden love and your heart aches and your hands of gold and your words. Gods, you and I could have been happy. But your hateful, lust filled words soiled the crop before it bloomed. If anyone but me had heard what you had just told me, they would have skinned you alive and used your skin for robes. Gods, you are no better than the sand sliders you kill. No better than stinking, sliming animals that rut and breed as if it is their only purpose,” She takes a step closer in disdain, “You cannot love him. You were not built to love him. You were built, you were made, to love me.”

Lex feels his heart fill with something new. The weight slowly begins to pool back in the pit of his stomach, molten gold hardening his insides. But the weight does not come alone. It brings the shame with it, the shame, and something newer, welcome, but painful. But the good kind of hurt. The hurt that makes your insides feel clean.

The thing the weight brings, the thing that follows the shame is knowing, is a clear choice.

He knows what he has to do.

Alexander Karstark breathes in-

“I do not think I can ever see you again. I’m leaving, tonight. Keep the house.”

-and breathes out.

The weight hits his stomach with a finality, it is there to stay.

Faugnan barely has time to open her mouth before her husband is out the door, taking to the night to find a dragon, some solace and absolution in the company of a man who can never give it to him.

And perhaps it is that very reason that he loves him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, oh my, things are really picking up. 
> 
> Thanks to all the reviewers (Sorry this gratitude has taken so long) and all those who left kudos. It is people like you who make writing this worthwhile. 
> 
> So, you're awesome, and know my life is better because you took the time to read this old thang. 
> 
> So have a good day. Smile often. Laugh a lot. Do not apologize for living. 
> 
> And remember that life is the longest thing we will ever experience, so grab it by the coattails and follow it where ever it leads you.


	12. Please

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hold your breath. Feel the rage. Open your eyes. Count the stars.

Anger blisters his insides as he waits. Or perhaps that is the remnants of the poison edging out of his body.

Gods, it hurt. It felt like he was burning alive from the inside out, felt his organs slowly begin to cook and stew. The pain of it paled when compared to losing his hand, but still, there were fingers of pain finding their way to his veins-

_She tried to kill me._

The thought buries itself in his head like a stubborn fish hook. It pulls and niggles at him, pokes the other thoughts aside and makes its presence known.

_She tried to kill me. And he won’t let me do anything about it._

No, the mighty savior would not let him kill his attacker. Instead he simply sends his king outside to wait while he talks to his wife. Did he think Viserys a child? Did he think he could order him around like that, as if he, a common watcher on the wall, had the right to order him from his home like a dog who had misbehaved? Did he?

Viserys kicks the dirt where he stands. He is the one true king of Westeros, the last trueborn son of Aegon Targaryen _and no common wench can kill me._

_I survived a crowning from the great Khal Drogo, fought off the Dohraki one handed, survived mutilation and now poison. And I shall leave no enemy unscorched when-_

When what?

He had no army. No dragons. No sister. No wealth. And only one hand, as far as anyone was concerned, Viserys Targaryen died days after he left the Dothraki camp, a burned and delirious mad man with nowhere to go.

And he would have been.

But he found them.

He found a husband and his wife living kindly ad simply in the middle of the Dothraki Sea, found them and was instantly taken with their way of life. The simplicity of it, the thankfulness in their eyes every time a chip of gold was knocked from his heavy hand. And, he thought, once or twice, something more in the husband’s eyes.

Something heavy. Something craving. Something shameful and shadowed.

But, he had pushed these thoughts away, for there was no way that they could be true. No, Alexander Karstark, the killer of White Walkers, the noble man of the Dothraki Sea had wasted all his lust on another love, on another creature with leathery wings and a plucking tongue, yes-

Faugnan had always been the problem, Viserys thought, even in the beginning. Even in the beginning, she knew what Viserys had stayed for. Not the home, the fire grass, not the easy life away from royalty and politics, no. She saw that he had stayed for the stars that shifted and turned in her husband’s eyes, saw Viserys watching him, saw the way he subconsciously leaned closer.

She had always hated him. Never once had she gone out of her way to be kind without much prompting and pleading from Lex, who knew early on that his wife did not like the stranger in their midst. And yes, she had let him stay.

But look where that had gotten him. Nearly dead, aching from the inside out and angry beyond anything he had ever felt before.

More furious than when his own flesh and blood, his beloved sister had betrayed him. You cannot choose your family, he knew this much. You cannot choose who your mother births from her womb, cannot choose who must carry through a burning city. Cannot choose who you love. Cannot choose who does not love you.

But you can choose your friends, your lovers. He had chosen Faugnan and Lex.

But Faugnan had not chosen him.

Viserys waits in the darkness for what seems like an hour before Lex finally emerges, shoulders bowing and head heavy, palm scraping over the back of his neck and a hand holding a heavy sack of something.

Viserys charges him, anger boiling beneath his lungs ad deep within his heart; _I loved you and you let her try and kill me._

“Had your justice than? Good. My turn,” Viserys says, pulling his sword from its scabbard with his hand, “I may not be as good with my left as I was with my right, but I doubt she’ll fight back. Women seldom do.”

He brushes past Lex, but the Northman grabs his elbow and holds him fast, growling out a low, “Viserys,” as his grip tightens about the other’s arm.

Viserys stiffens beneath his hand, tightening his grip on his sword.

“Do not presume,” He spits, shrugging off Lex’s grip, “To touch your king.”

Even in the half light, Viserys can see Lex grinding his teeth as he bites out a rueful, “I apologize, your highness. But you’ll find nothing in there.”

“What? Did you kill her?” Viserys asks.

“No,” Lex says, looking back across the moors.

He loved it here, he really did. He loved the sand sliders, loved the whisper and worry of the grass, and loved the mutter of the wind and the never ending sky. He loved his wife and he loved a man, and he knew he shouldn’t love either of them because they were both the very definition of discourse, but he didn’t care.

He lived on a sea of grass and he was happy.

Now he was leaving the sea, the wife and the sky behind. But he didn’t have to leave the man, so help him, he could not leave that to, and though it burned his very insides to think it let alone say it, he could not leave this handless man leave him.

But he could also not let him kill her. He could not. The woman inside that home he had loved, despite her sharpness, her swallowing love, her misplaced beauty and her poisons, he still loved her.

But it was a warped, twisted kind of love. The kind of love that makes your insides feel dry and raw, the kind of love that kept you up at night with regret. But it was a love, however painful.

“Well, let me go, and I’ll go clean up your mess,” Viserys said, but Lex grabbed his shoulder again. The one true king of Westeros did not turn around this time, did not slip from his grasp, just stood. Stood and waited.

“Viserys…Please,” Lex sighed, barely above a whisper, “Don’t. Not… not that. Please.”

Viserys knew he should have brushed the hand off. Viserys knew he should have broken through the thin door, should have butchered Faugnan for her betrayal, should have mounted her head on a spike outside the house and stayed on the Dothraki Sea with Lex. They could be happy here, if Lex would let him change what needed to be changed.

But…

But he didn’t. He didn’t break the door, didn’t kill the wife, didn’t mount the head. He just stood there, haunted by the weight of the Northman’s words, held in hollow suspension, in worried wonder.

“Viserys,” Lex said, “How do you feel about ships?”

Viserys turned around, eyebrows furrowed, “What?”

“Ships. Travelling over open water. How do you feel about leaving the Dothraki Sea. With me. Going somewhere else.”

“Where would we go?”

Lex smirked in the darkness, “Wherever we want.”

And with that, he pulled from the small pouch at his hip a pile of gold chips, each one falling through his fingers back into the bag like priceless sand.

Viserys smiled openly and looked Lex in the face and found, much unlike he was used to, that Lex was smiling back at him.

“Your heavy hand was useful after all, Golden Tongue.”

“So it would seem.”

Lex swept an arm through the air, pointing down the path that led towards West.

“Shall we?”

 

And so they set off down the road, leaving their memories of the Dothraki Sea in the footprints they left in the rust colored dirt, taking to the empty path ahead with nothing but the silk sheet of the night above them.

They spent the night walking slowly, talking of walls and doors and siblings and fathers and, most importantly, counting the stars that lit the way ahead.

The night that unraveled before them was inviting.

And vast.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a woman's lie is found out, a feeling is felt and the sea remembers.

They spend the better part of four months travelling. They go only west, do not allow the winds to steer them any other way.

Lex kills sand sliders when he can and they cook them over an open fire away from the main road. They heard tell from others that there were several Dothraki hordes on their way to Vaes Dothrak, so they left the road whenever they heard the thunder of hooves, narrowly avoiding several small hordes of Dothraki.

“Why are there so many of them going to Vaes?” Viserys whispered to Lex as the watched the groups of riders and horses and slaves.

“They celebrate the waning of the New Year’s moon. It’s a little known tradition, but it is celebrated nonetheless,” Lex whispered back, hand tightening around the hilt of his sword as the one of the horses shied a bit closer to the line of fire grass.

“Do all the hordes go there?”

“Mostly yes. It is a long held tradition, and often brings peace to most wars.”

Viserys wondered to himself if Danerys would be there, but he quickly banished the thought.

They continued on their way after the horde passed.

It is slow going for the first few days; they do not come across a horse seller for a few days, and by that point their feet were aching so much they would have ridden a pig had they been given the chance.

They bought their horses and each man heard the other sigh with relief when they first mounted, the weight finally off their feet.

Yes, looking back on it, they would both describe it as a painful, exhausting few days, but those few days of on foot travel gave them plenty of time to talk.

They would talk of most anything, really. There was no topic left untouched by the end of the fourth day, nothing had gone unsaid.

Not even the subject of the woman Viserys loved. The one Faugnan had told him he spoke of in his sleep.

Of course, Faugnan could have been lying, Lex knew this. This was when she would have said anything to make him love her, even destroying his crooked hopes of ever being with a man, a sin and crime in Westeros.

Lex himself had never heard Viserys speak of a woman either, other than his sister whom Lex already knew existed.

However, there was always a chance that Viserys had woman he loved waiting in Westeros. There could always be some maiden awaiting him in some far off castle, just like all the songs spoke of.

Lex could see the appeal. Viserys was attractive (even with the short hair and single hand) was witty and clever and undoubtedly, his title and claim to the throne would make him very attractive to many women, so, it would not be surprising in the least if Viserys had someone waiting for him, or even, if he was married.

But, speculation only took Lex so far, and it wasn’t long before he found his questions itching beneath his skin. He wanted to know the answer, he guessed. But at the same time, he didn’t.

Because it would be a relief, a cascading, wonderful relief to know that he had no one awaiting his return, no one think of and find warmth in the memory of on those cold nights.

But with the possibility of there being no woman, came the equally crushing thought of there actually being one.

That was on the second day. The second day was the day that Lex could no longer bear to wonder anymore, _he had to know_ , so, as casually as he could one day he asked:

“So… When we reach a ship, are we travelling to a ‘where’, or a ‘who’?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… are we going to a place or a person?”

Viserys looked up from the ground, “Are you asking me if I have someone waiting for me?”

Lex felt a heat rise in his cheeks, “Well, uh, I suppose, if you think about I, perhaps I am inquiring-“

Viserys breathed out a wary laugh before saying, “God you’re thick. No, I’m not going anywhere. There is no one. All I have,” He said, “Is you. Does that clear things up for you, you halfwit?”

Lex felt his insides swell with a joy he was not used to. That joy soon lost its heat as he remembered that anything he felt towards Viserys was wrong. Anything beyond friendship meant that he was wrong. He knew it in his bones, new that others knew it and yet he could not help but love the last vestiges of happiness cool insides of him.

“What about you?” Viserys asked suddenly, “Do we go to a ‘where’ or a ‘whom’?”

Lex just shook his head dully, “I go wherever you go.”

Viserys smiled and said, “Then let us go wherever we shall. And let us go somewhere more civilized than this shit hole, to the dust with it all. I am the One true King of Westeros, and damn the old gods and the new, I want to sleep in a real bed before I die.”

And with that, he urged his horse onwards, kicking up the dust behind him. Alexander Karstark watched him go, for a few moments, held the image as long as he could before he coughed, spurred his horse and chased after him.

In that moment they were not men. They were not rightful king and Karstark. They dragon and sunburst. They were fire and blood and the sun of winter, bound endlessly by the swallowing road and the unshakable feeling of longing that bore them broken deep within their bones.

The road would remember that day, the day the sun and the dragon were happy.

But the sea would remember what came after. Would remember the silence, the sounds, the falling, the way the fires would paint the bay scarlet and gold…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foreshadowing: Hinting at something that will happen later in the story, often used to heighten interest or instill a feeling of suspense or anxiety in the reader. 
> 
> The crescendo is coming, my dear readers. 
> 
> Mu. Ha. Ha.


	14. Dorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A captain brings tidings of safe passage and offers of friendship, but Viserys sees too much to approve. Lex, sees little.

They stay at the first none Dothraki owned inn they find. The second they tie their horses to the posts outside and find a room, Lex is downing horns of ale as if it is the best and purest thing he has ever known.

The inn is small and dusty, like many things found on the Dothraki Sea. It squats in the fire grass, roof hardly taller than the stalks of fern. There is a small crowd of patrons, Dothraki outcasts mostly, but there is the crew of a ship there as well. Wine sellers from the Free Cities. They do not stay for the night, or so it seems, and only came for the women and the ale, but they are rowdy and drunkenly loud and for their noise, Viserys is grateful.

Lex partakes in conversation with a few of them, coaxes them into talking about their lives and their homes and the news from Westeros.

As it happens, the Usurper is dead, his son ruling in his place.

“But, word ‘as it,” A sailor named Scarlett says, “That ‘e’s not the king’s real son.”

“Oh,” Lex says, “Then who’s the father?”

Scarlett downed the last of his wine before leaning uncomfortably close to Lex (Scarlett was not a particularly clean man) and saying in a voice laden with purpose and secrecy-

“Jaimie Lannister.”

“The queen’s twin brother?” Lex inquired, eyes wide as saucers.

“The very same. What’s more, everyone else in King’s Landing and Winterfell ‘inks that the other two aren’t Robert’s either, that they’re products of incest as well.”

Viserys listened eagerly. Unrest in the capital meant unrest in the whole of Westeros, and if the masses believed this king unentitled to the crown perhaps-

Perhaps Viserys had an opportunity to do some usurping of his own. The rightful king of Westeros, returned after a long exile in the East, without a hand and with a banished and disgraced Karstark in tow; not the most inspiring of kings, nor at first the most promising of Hands, but Viserys was certain that with the right amount of time they would soon fall happily beneath his reign.

The night continued on in a similar manner; Lex drank and spoke happily with Scarlett and various other crew members about the fall of the king and the rise of the Lannisters and of Stannis Baratheon’s claim to the throne and the rise of the Stark boy in the North.

And when the conversation steered away from politics Viserys gave up listening and began thinking more of his rule.

Lex would be his Hand, he decided, after a few moments of consideration. There were few other people he believed he would even consider, and none of them had been more loyal to their king than Lex had in their months together.

In his mind, Viserys made the decision long ago about who he would have as his advisor, and for the foreseeable future that decision would not change.

Because Lex was the most noble, most loyal, most impeccably redundant and unexpected man he had ever known, and he would die before he ruled any kingdom without him in it.

Viserys drinks beside him, though, not as much, more entertained by watching Lex than by anything else. The way his head tilts backwards, his heavy breathing after each throatful, the way he licks his lips as if he has a secret.

“What are you staring at?”

Viserys is pulled from his observations and finds Lex looking at him quizzically.

“What?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“I’m a king, I can stare at what I want.”

“You’re not a king yet.”

“I am by birthright.”

“But not by crown,” Lex raises his hand for more ale, “All you’ve got is blood and we’ve all got that.”

“Are you questioning your king’s right to rule?” Viserys growls, eyes flashing.

Lex shakes his head, “I’m questioning your eyes and their wanderings, your majesty.”

The word feels wrong rolling off Lex’s tongue. _Majesty._ It sounds like a curse word, terse and clipped and sharp. _Majesty._ Like some sort of vulgar creature that lives in murky water.

Viserys falls silent momentarily, stunned at Lex’s use of a word he had coveted his whole life before saying, “My eyes shall wander where they will.”

Lex thought for a moment, smiled thinly and said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let your eyes wander where they shall.”

Lex raised his glass in a toast and went back to the conversation.

It was not long after that that the small band of sailors that Lex had befriended invited over, of all people, the captain.

Captain Sidara Dakmon was a tall (not as tall as Lex, but certainly taller than Viserys), exotic looking man. Viserys could not exactly place what about him was exotic; it was neither the soft dark tan color of his skin, nor the gold that you could see hidden in the startling green of his eyes. It was also not the tattoos that swirled and slid like adders over what you could see of his chest and neck.

Viserys thought, in the end, it was his voice. Dornish, most definitely, sleek and deep and rumbling, it was a growl Viserys was sure would make the Lannisters envious.

“Alexander Karstark,” Sidara said, “My men have told me very little about you, but they assure me you are a man with many stories to tell.”

“I’ve got a few,” Lex said coyly.

“I should very much like to hear a few of them,” Sidara said, sitting down in a chair that seemed to materialize out of nowhere beneath him, "I am a man who loves stories."

Viserys decided, very quickly that he did not like Captain Sidara Dakmon. He did not like how tall he was, did not like his eyes or his tattoos. He did not like his voice or how Lex listened to it, nor how Lex spoke to him easily and coolly about his life on the sea of grass.

And most certainly, Viserys did not like how charming the captain was, and, were it not for the women who clung to the Dornishman like fleas, Viserys may have called himself worried of where Lex's eyes may wander.

But he wasn’t, of course he wasn’t... _jealous._

“Your friend is very quiet,” He heard the Dornishman say suddenly.

Viserys turned sharply to look at him. While Lex and the captain had been deep in conversation a woman had appeared behind Sidara and was trailing her fingers through his thick black hair, rubbing her nose along the shell of his ear.

“His ‘friend’ is simply thinking thoughts too high for the likes of sea farers. Things of old blood and fire and gold,” Viserys snapped.

Sidara nodded pleasantly, closing his eyes momentarily before saying, in his lilting voice, “Fair enough. A man’s thoughts are a man’s thoughts.”

_A king’s thoughts,_ Viserys thought to himself as he downed the last of his ale, _I am a king to you, sailor._

“I believe I shall retire,” Viserys said to Lex, standing up and climbing the stairs to the small room they had rented.

As soon as the doors closed behind him, Viserys leaned his head against the wood, head suddenly aching.

“Don’t do anything stupid down there without me,” Viserys whispered into the door, “You foolish, oafish man.”

Viserys slept restlessly that night, plagued by dreams of rattling sails, turbulent seas and of a throaty laugh coming from the clouds.

XxX

 

“Your friend is very troubled,” Sidara said, “One of the most troubled men I have met in the Dothraki Sea.”

Lex furrowed his brows carefully, “That’s because most worried men are only worried for so long, here.”

“How did he lose his hand?” Sidara asked, trailing a lazy finger down the woman’s cheek.

Lex called for more ale, sighing heavily before saying, with the ghost of a smirk, “In a duel. He lost it in a duel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wonderful people have no idea how much I wanted to call him 'Captain Dorito'. 
> 
> Also, tattoos in Westeros? Yes? No? SHANINE SAYS YES.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hated is mulled over, a captain is schmoozed, and the stars go without counting.

Late into the evening, before morning but long after sunset, Captain Sidara said something that made Lex feel both uneasy and excited. It was a proposal more than anything, a slight and offhanded question that brought a thin sliver of ice to rest just beneath Lex’s heart. Lex didn’t know what brought it on; the wine, the company, the women trailing their fingers through Sidara’s hair or whether it was just Lex’s demeanor or the fact that Sidara hadn’t fucked anyone that night, but whatever the reason, Sidara convinced Lex to follow him to a brothel.

Truly Lex did not want to go; his mind was busy with other things.

Viserys had seemed quite angry earlier. Lex had merely wanted to know what he was staring at and Viserys had taken it quite seriously, and when Lex tried to make a joke of it, tried make him smile, to make him open up to what he usually was, Viserys had gotten even angrier. And to be quite honest, Lex was concerned, having noticed that Viserys’s mood shifted when they had been introduced to the sailors.

And to be even more honest, Lex didn’t like them either. Sidara was a fine man, yes, but he seemed the type to hold his ethics and beliefs above all else, and, Lex could foresee a few issues when it came to Viserys and these ethics, if they were to procure a place on Sidara’s ship.

The only reason Lex agreed to go to the brothel at all was because he thought it would be a good opportunity to sway Sidara into lowering the price of board; Lex knew he and Viserys were going to have to pay for a place on the ship, but that did not mean he could not heckle the captain into lowering it.

So, Lex followed him to the brothel.

But Alexander Karstark did not do this blindly, there was no naïve hope brewing softly in his heart that if he did this he would not have to pay for safe passage across the Narrow Sea, he knew he would have to pay, but he had the sneaking suspicion that Captain Sidara was the kind of man who was very kind to his friends, and that, perhaps, if Viserys did his part, they could get to King’s Landing with less of a hole burnt in their pocket than had they come across some other sailor.

But Sidara is charismatic, kind, generous, a bit of a whore himself, with no general understanding of personal space but Lex will forgive him of every sin so long as he can give them board on his ship.

So, for the good of their travels, Viserys follows Sidara to the whorehouse. The ride there is only a few minutes, but that is long enough for Lex to plan his attack.

The whorehouse is small and beaten, only four windows and two doors, and though the walls are made of stone Lex can hear moaning, loud and soft, hear screeching and yelling and cursing coming from all the rooms the held sinfully within.

“Dothraki whores are the best at what they do,” Sidara said, wrapping an arm around Lex’s shoulder, “Apart from Dornish whores, of course. But when it comes to primal love making, ruthless enjoyment and to be quite honest, the general art of fucking, the Dothraki women are not be overlooked.”

Sidara was hopelessly drunk. His eyes were somewhat watery, his face, though darkly tanned, looked red and sometimes his words slurred, but he held Lex firmly by the arms as he said, in delight, in hopeless, ecstatic anticipation, “Are you ready to have a night to remember Alexander Karstark?”

Lex felt himself tremble slightly, but he smirked softly, raised his eyes, and clapped Sidara on the shoulder as he said, without a hitch in his voice, “More than you will ever know.”

XxX

Late into the evening, long after Lex and Sidara had left, Viserys lay awake thinking, shrouded in the darkness, in the humble silence of the night.

Viserys was a clever man. He had been taught, since boyhood how to be clever, that he _was_ clever, that everyone else was beneath him, that he was a king, that his father was one of the brightest men to ever live, that to be a good king you have to be bright, so Viserys studied and memorized to be just as good a king as his father was.

And yet, for all his cleverness, all his intelligence and wit, he could not quite put his finger on what he hated about Captain Sidara Dakmon.

Many things annoyed Viserys about the man; he was too tall, too charismatic, too attractive, his voice was too deep, his tattoos were too flashy, his hands were too well groomed and his eyes were unnerving.

But none of these were the things that made Viserys Targaryen, the rightful king of Westeros _hate him._

Viserys had hated the Dothraki, hated his sister, hated Ser Jorah but he had not hated them like this. He wanted to rip them all limb from limb, yes, but his hatred for the captain was different.

Viserys had not even hated Faugnan like this, but he supposed that hatred was a little different. Sidara had not tried to kill him, but somehow his offence seemed even worse. His hatred for Faugnan was simple; he wanted her dead and he wanted to do it, but, that was all.

But his hatred for the captain was a complicated, plucking thing. He wanted to murder the captain, slowly, delicately, wanted him to suffer.

And Viserys supposed, when it came down to it that it was because Sidara made Lex…

Not Lex.

Lex was not terribly smart. He wasn’t brutish or rude, was kind to the most undeserving of people and that was what Viserys adored about him.

But Sidara, Sidara was one of those men who could only see one side of things. Sidara thought men were made to love women, Sidara brought Lex women (Viserys asked Scarlett where the captain and Lex had gone and Scarlett had told him without haste that Sidara had taken Lex to a brothel.) and with women came Lex’s lust for them just as with Faugnan and that drew a wedge between them. A wedge that made Viserys lie awake in the darkness, hating a stranger.

“Oh, Alexander Karstark,” Viserys whispered, eyes sliding shut, “You awake much more in me than dragons.”

The darkness swallowed his voice as he turned onto his side and fell asleep, listening to the hum of the wind and the croak of the sand sliders as they slithered beneath the red grass.

XxX

When surrounded by many beautiful women, all there to touch him, to love him and for the life of him, Lex can barely do more than look at them.

He’s married, he keeps telling Sidara, his wife is in King’s Landing waiting for him.

Sidara tells him he is too good, too loyal, too trustworthy, pushes stumbling, giggling women onto him but Lex merely smiles a fake and brittle smile and jokes about Viserys telling his wife when they get back.

“Your wife has probably taken dozens of men to her bed in the time you have been gone. Even the scales, dear Karstark, we are men, we are strong, we are young and these women,” One of the women scrapes a tongue up the captain’s side, “Are very wonderful.”

Lex plays hard to get, but eventually, he takes a woman by the hand and leads her into one of the rooms, making Sidara smile widely as he walks away. Lex makes sure that he sees Sidara bring four women of his own into another room before closing the door to his.

When the door closes, the woman, Erieen she says her name is, removes her shawl and stands before him, but he simply waves a hand and offers her a Golden Dragon, saying simply, “There’s no need for that. Just take this.”

“My lord, do I not please you?” She asks sincerely, her Common Tongue a bit broken, thickly accented like Faugnan’s was when he first met her, but she is easy to understand.

“No, not at all, you’re beautiful, and I imagine good at what you do, but-“Lex laughed breathily to himself, “My love lies with another.”

Eireen smiles shyly and says, “My lord is very kind, and very lucky to have someone he loves.”

“Oh, I’m no lord,” Lex says, winking at her as he slips through the door. Sidara is not in the hallway, and Lex can hear grunting, huffing and swearing and a few garbled sentences that, from the brothel hallway, sound very descriptive.

Lex grabs his horse and rides back to the inn, passing a few horridly drunk sailors who greet him loudly and ask where their captain is.

“He’s busy enjoying himself,” Lex says with a smile.

Viserys is asleep in the only bed when Lex opens their door quietly, and he smiles and shakes his head.

_Of course there’s only one bed._

Lex sighs and walks over to Viserys, who’s asleep on his side, taking up the entire straw mattress.

“Viserys,” Lex whispers.

Lex is tired. Wine still warms his stomach and he feels accomplished in deceiving and endearing himself to Sidara, and all he really wants to do is sleep.

“Viserys,” He whispers again, and this time the one handed man moans quietly and says, his voice as sharp in sleep as it is in waking;

“What do you want?”

Lex smiles halfheartedly in the darkness as he says, “Would you mind moving over?”

Viserys groans and does so, rolling to the opposite edge of the bed, pressing his forehead against the wall as Lex climbs in beside him. Viserys moans tiredly as Lex shuffles around, trying to stay in the bed but trying not to touch Viserys, but his legs are too long and he has to bend them in order to stay on.

His knees press up against backs of Viserys’s, his thighs flush against the other man’s. Immediately he feels himself blush, can feel his face going red, his ears, his eyes shifting from side to side as he asks, “Am I too close?”

(He wants to be closer.)

“No. T’s fine,” Viserys breathes out.

Lex smiles with half his mouth as he lays his head down, his nose just barely brushing Viserys’s shoulder.

He breathes in the other man’s scent all through what is left of the night, and slowly, as the hours inch forward, Lex shifts closer and closer, unconsciously, and Viserys does not push him away.

XxX

The moment Lex enters the room, Viserys is wide awake, alert.

When Lex asks him to move over, he tries to rein in his heart, which threatens to beat right out of his chest. He can barely breathe as he moves, so many feelings lashing out at each other, conflicting, fighting feelings that he cannot understand.

He is angry at Lex for sleeping with a whore. Exciting at being so close to him. Nervous that Lex will sense how willing Viserys is to be close. Ever so slightly guilty for the way he snapped at Lex earlier that day.

So he pretends he is just tired, pretends everything is fine, is as dull and trivial as ever as Lex climbs into the bed beside him, and Viserys can feel his embarrassment creep into his cheeks as Lex presses close to him, his knees warm.

Lex smells like a whorehouse; like dust and oil and beneath that, the slender notes of jasmine, and it makes him sick to his stomach to smell it on him but in that one, shining, glistening moment, he doesn’t care.

Because Alexander Karstark, the man who cut off his hand and who saved his life is pushed up against him and in that turbulent moment Viserys Targaryen was the happiest he had been in all his life.

As the stars whispered to each other outside, the two slept, nested together as if their place had never been anywhere else, but there.


	16. The Wrong Name

The next morning anger rises in Viserys like an adder, precise and flaring. Viserys leaps from the bed the moment he is awake as though burned by Lex’s betrayal.

He can hardly call it that though; Lex has not wronged him personally in any way, but it still feels like he’s been kicked in the stomach and it makes his hand itch and burn to think of Lex sharing a bed with someone else, _with a pathetic woman of all things, of all creatures he could lay with, after Faugnan and her own betrayal, how could he run to the arms of another the first chance he got? Women are scum. After all, why lie with a whore when you can lie with a king?_

Viserys shakes himself from that particular thought. No. He doesn’t want Lex. Lex is used, Lex is worked over, burnt out, he can have all the whores he wishes, so long as he doesn’t spend Viserys’s golden hand on the warmth of women.

Viserys shrugs off the thought, shakes it from his back as though it is a pesky insect. He doesn’t need him. He doesn’t.

He is Viserys Targaryen, rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms and he does not need some north man to love him in order to be what he is; a king. A dra-

No. No, he’s no dragon. Not anymore.

But he is a Targaryen, the last true Targaryen, and he does not need a dragon at his side to be a good king. He does not need a Karstark with a problem keeping vows in order to be happy.

What he does need in that very moment though, is wine. And lots of it.

So he walks coolly to the man who sells the ale and the wine, tosses several gold dragons at the man and says, “I need lots.”

 

XxX

 

Alexander Karstark wakes up to the sound of cheering, yelling and Viserys Targaryen. People are clapping, laughing, shouting their agreement and their argument and the first thing Lex thinks when he hears the faint drawling of Viserys is _oh no._

He quickly rises from the bed and stumbles down the hallway to the main inn, where there are no less than 13 people all gathered around Viserys who stands in the center of the room, sitting on one of the tables, his head thrown back as he downs a flagon of wine while around him the sailors of Sidara’s ship clap a whoop.

When Viserys finishes his drink he opens his arms wide and continues, it would seem, on a harangue. Viserys smiles before he begins to speak, wide eyed, slightly dazed and Lex smiles along with him, unseen down the hallway, because Viserys looks like he’s enjoying himself and that’s always refreshing to see.

And the sailors are laughing with him and not trying to beat him into oblivion, which Lex has to say had happened on more than one occasion (When they met other travelers on their way through the Dothraki Sea Lex had to raise his sword and defend Viserys on multiple occasions, as his friend would often tell the other road takers what exactly was wrong with their faces, which they typically didn’t like.)

“-and she grabbed me by the arm and said ‘Vaugnan Tierny, allow me to fuck you through all the Seven Heavens and their Seven Hells’ but what she didn’t know was that all through the night I was the one fucking her _through hells and heavens._ And let me tell you, gents, she was a goddess, and she took her heavens and her hells like a true woman: very loudly” Viserys yelled into the room and a wave of hearty laughter washing over the sailors, including Sidara, who grins genuinely from the back of the room.

Sidara is without a female companion, which is odd for him but no one seems to pay him any mind, all eyes on Viserys who seems to glow beneath their collective gazes.

“And then this other whore, beautiful, asked me about all my travels, everything I’d seen and she had me recite them while I fucked her. I told her of the man I once met who could change his face like women change clothes,” His voice grew slower, less filled with energy, “Of a pirate I met who flew sails made of silk and of the great dragon skulls-“

“Not the dragon skulls at King’s Landing?” Sidara yelled from the back of the room, “The ones the Targaryens used to keep in the throne room?”

“Yes the skulls in King’s Landing,” Viserys said simply, not even looking at the captain, brisling with a sudden anger.

“You did not you great liar,” Sidara said genially, smiling a toothy grin.

“In truth I did you great sea dwelling buffoon, now shut up I’m describing the best fuck of my life, and do try and listen carefully; you may learn a thing or two. I can’t imagine those sea legs do very well in bed,” Viserys snapped, glaring daggers down at Sidara who only laughed and smiled and raised his hands in surrender.

“They do as well as my cock and my hands and my tongue, which I assure you, are very good. But please my friend, please, continue.”

So Viserys did, went on to describe a woman whom Lex had never met and the longer he talked the more hollow Lex began to feel.

There was a dull ache in his gut, and the spark of happiness he had felt watching Viserys explain in burning, wretched detail all his conquests.

So he left. Went out the back door, mounted his horse and tore off down the pathway he had taken the night before, betrayal burning deep in his belly and he tied his horse to a post, entered the whorehouse with a feverish step.

He saw her the moment he walked in, beautiful and kind and naïve and everything he had once thought he wanted.

Erieen is plaint beneath his hands as he kisses her, softly at first and then more hungrily, as he claps a few golden dragons into her hand and carries her into an empty room.

When he kisses her, she tastes ashen on his lips. When he touches her, she feels scaly beneath his hands.

When he gasps out a name it is not hers.

When he leaves it is heavy with shame, the name still on his tongue, burning him, and he hates himself for loving the way it does not leave him.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The deed is done.

The Marica is a very impressive ship, Viserys must say. Long and sleek, it stretches a hundred meters in every direction and sports a finely carved gold painted sun adorning the front of the ship.

Viserys shivered inwardly as he stepped aboard, hand sliding casually up the railing as the other held tightly to his sword. Behind him, Lex was marveling at the sea that sloshed and heaved beneath the ship, exclaiming his wonderment at seeing it again after all this time.

Viserys smiled. He had missed living by the sea, missed hearing the waves crash and breathe against the shore, missed the lavish castle and he even spared Illyrio a thought on occasion. While the man’s kindness has been appreciated, he had not made particularly good company and Viserys had often grown bored and had simply stopped listening when Illyrio talked.

“Beautiful ship, Sidara,” Lex said to the captain genially (Viserys cringed, noticeably, catching the eye of some of the crew members who bustled about, preparing to launch.), “Where did you ever come across it?”

Sidara laughed his rolling laugh, great large head tipping backwards as he said, “House Martell can be very generous, if you know them well enough.”

Lex clapped him on the back with an open palm, “That sounds like a story I’d very much like to hear.”

“I’m sure you would, Karstark.”

“And _I’m_ sure,” Viserys interrupted, stepping between Sidara and Lex and looking the captain in the eye, completely ignoring the northerner, “To be shown my quarters.”

Sidara’s face fell, whereas Viserys smirked, and Lex simply sighed.

“What he means to say…” Lex began.

“What he means to say is that he wants to be shown his quarters,” Viserys finished for him, head snapping back to glare at Lex who simply sighed deeper.

Viserys was still angry. Of course he was. He had no reason to be, but he was and he could not explain it. Because Lex had slept with a whore and then shared (in the literal sense of the word) his bed? Not quite. There was something more primal in it than that. Because Lex had left with Sidara? Partly, Viserys supposed.

He dared not think the last thought that came to his head. _Because he’s mine_. He dared not think it because it wasn’t true. Viserys did not want him that way, _could_ not want it that way, because he was a _king_. And a king needed a queen, and a Hand and a Hound and Viserys had only one of those things.

He had his Hand. He had known Lex was his Hand the moment he had left Faugnan, the evil bitch that she was. He had known Lex was his Hand all those times on the way to the Narrow Sea, when perhaps Viserys had maybe overstepped his bounds, or insulted a traveler too liberally; Lex was always there, always ready to save them, always ready to help them.

Lex was always there, always noble and sometimes Viserys _hated_ how loyal he was but-

No. No he didn’t want him. He wanted a queen. He wanted a Hound. He wanted a Hand. He wanted Westeros, dragons.

He wanted to see his quarters. His stomach was churning already and they hadn’t even set sail. He knew, deep in his heart, that this was going to be a long and painful journey, filled with gut wrenching, empty stomachs and weeks of sleepless nights.

And he was to be damned if the way Lex was looking at him didn’t make his stomach twist more than any high sea or rogue wave could.

 

XxX

 

“I’ feels…” Viserys says dully, head lolling over the side of the ship’s rail while Lex stands beside him, “Like ‘m having my gut ripped out by a direwolf…”

“Oh my,” Lex says, “That can’t feel good.”

“How very clever o’ you, Ale’ander Kar’ark.”

Lex has his elbows on the rail, his hands folded over his arms as he watches Viserys loose his meals on the sea. When all that is done, when there’s nothing left for Viserys to expel, it’s just dry heaving.

Lex stays as long as he can (Viserys never ventures far from the railing anymore; two days in and he vomits all day and all night, rarely going back to their shared quarters and was caught once sleeping while standing, his head covered by his arms. Lex had been the one to wake him up of course; god forbid any of the crewmembers try. Viserys would have slit their throats in a heartbeat, but not Lex. And not when Lex came with breakfast.) but he must steal away twice daily to speak with Sidara.

When the captain is not fucking, he spars with Lex. He is a master swordsman, one of the best Lex has ever seen, and the Northman is grateful to have the opportunity to even spar, let alone be something like a friend to him. They do this twice daily and after every battle, Sidara offers him Cecily.

She is one of the whores that Sidara purchased, and she is lithe and golden haired and softly spoken, and Sidara favors her especially, above Ariaa, the Dornish girl he said he brought along for ‘culture’s sake’.

Cecily talks to him often, tells her all the things she would do to him, of all the things he would let him do to her. And Lex must say, that the words that meet his ears sound very nice, that her voice is smooth and low and it sounds a little like Faugnan’s and he thinks, in another life he would have fucked her.

 

But now, every time he sees Viserys, however wracked with shivers he is, however much his muscles convulse, he still feels his heart beat a little faster and his stomach flutters in ways it never did with any woman.

But he knows it is wrong. Sidara told him, just today how wrong it was, out of the blue, without any prompting. Lex nearly threw himself off the ship, as a sudden nausea gripped him and his head grew light and airy.

“You and Vaugnan…” Sidara began, “Seem very close.”

“No closer than most,” Lex says simply, his hand dragging across the blade of his sword.

Sidara smiled, “No, no. I’ve had friends, good ones too, but never anything like you and he have. It seems almost too close…”

“We have seen much together.”

“But not too much of each other I would hope. You know I once killed a man who fucked other men for pleasure,” Sidara told him as they ate beef and Cecily trailed her fingers through the captain’s hair.

Lex clenched his jaw, heart beating a little faster as he tried to say, as calmly as possible, “I understand. People afflicted with… love…”

“Not love,” Sidara said, “Demons. They are ungodly creatures and deserve to burn in all the Seven Hells where all the Seven Gods preside. I hope that the One True King of Westeros rids this earth of those filthy creatures.”

“You seem to take it very personally,” Lex said.

“I’ve known too many a man fucker to trust them, no matter who they are.”

 

XxX

 

It’s when the crew starts mocking Viserys that Lex thinks they won’t make it to King’s Landing. That they’ll be killed instead.

Viserys doesn’t do well with mockery, never has, never will. Lex supposed it came from the Dothraki, and from when he was a child. Always being called the Beggar King, Weary Leg, Broken Crown. It was born into him, this hated vehemence towards insults, this propensity for venom.

So when Sidara’s crew began to make jibes, to cringe and tell him he stank of bile, Viserys, as he would, grew angry.

There was one attacker in particular, Vermonhon, who simply made Viserys’ blood boil. Lex had actually had to stop Viserys from killing the sailor in his sleep one night by confiscating Viserys’ kitchen knife.

The insults that flew back and forth between Viserys and Vermonhon were often exchanged very loudly, and without any real regard for who was listening, and before long most of the crew was supporting one man or the other, and the jibes and remarks often drew out a corus of laughter from the surrounding sailors, and even once or twice, Lex himself.

“Oi, Empty Gut, how are the waves today?” Vermonhom would yell.

“Go suck a siren cock you foul ass horse,” Viserys would yell back, his voice strangled from where his bile has burned through his throat.

“Only after you finally jump off that fucking rail and join the sea where the rest of you is.”

“I hope dragons burn you to pieces.”

“The dragons are dead.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” Viserys hisses, stepping away from the railing, where Lex stands, watching the exchange go through its motions.

It happens like this every day, and in the end, Lex decides that it is the deciding factor: this hate for someone.

It is the nail in his coffin.

That, and the drink. Drinks, actually. Sidara celebrates with him one night, for reasons Lex cannot exactly remember, but he and the good captain partake in many drinks, and much wine is poured and in his drunken state, Sidara proposes that Lex finally whip out his cock and fuck Cecily, who curls her arm around his smiles, but the smile does not reach her eyes.

Ad Lex tells them all that he is too tired, that he must retire, and it’s true. He’s exhausted. He spends his days sparring with a master swordsman and standing in the blazing sun beside Viserys who can never seem to get any rest.

Lex is exhausted when he stumbles back to their room, and he is startled by Viserys who is already in there, taking off his shirt and talking.

“Vermonhon is such a prick,” He says, whipping the shirt over his head angrily and throwing it onto the floor, “I’m going to kill him. I swear to the Gods, Old and New, I am going to kill him, with my hand if I have to. I am his king, how dare he mock me. He’s nearly as bad as that Dothraki whore we met on our way here, the one who was so needy and sharp and pathetic, her whole species be damned, his too for all I care-”

Lex feels warm, feels close. He looks at Viserys and he feels at home.

Maybe that’s why he kisses him.

Or maybe it’s the wine. Maybe it’s the weight of the secret that’s been pulling him to his knees for what has come to be an entire year. Maybe it’s the knowledge that somewhere, Faugnan is living her life without him, maybe it’s the sense of failure that he could never give her a child.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that Lex loves Viserys, despite his venom, despite the consequences.

So he kisses him.

And kisses him, and beneath his lips Viserys is tense until all at once he isn’t, relaxing beneath Lex as the Northman curls an arm around Viserys’ waist and opens his mouth a bit more.  

Lex closes his eyes, feels, tastes, smells, hears Viserys, and all at once he has never felt more alive, never happier, never more content, as he pushes Viserys onto the bed, and slowly begins to undo the lacing of his breeches, his hands sliding down his chest and tugging at his silver hair, which has finally started to grow long again.

What happens when their breeches come off, well, that goes on all night. It’s back and forth, first Lex makes the moves, says the right words and looks at Viserys’ eyes, and then it’s his king’s turn. Then it’s the One True King of Westeros fucking his Hand, and in that moment there doesn’t need to be a Queen, or a Hound or a goddamn kingdom, there just has to be this, this moment, this place, this man beneath him and it’s the closest thing Viserys has ever felt to true royalty.

All that they gave Daenerys in that tent, Lex gives him tenfold in this cabin that rolls over the waves on the Narrow Sea.

 

XxX

 

They are different afterwards. Closer. Lex reduces the number of sparring to one a day, so he can be with Viserys.

They sleep in the same bed.

Sometimes they kiss when they are certain no one is watching, swift and chaste before they attract anyone’s gaze. And they are both _so_ happy. So happy they don’t bare their secret any longer, so happy they don’t have to hide from each other even if they still have to hide it from the world.

It is when Sidara walks in on them one night, drunk out of his mind, that their happiness crumbles into ashes…

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, they done the do. Finally. God, I was ready to just smash those two together.


	18. Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rise and pull of the sea brings new land and, in turn, as it always must, new problems.

Everything in Lex’s world collapses, as suddenly as it had all been built.

Sidara turns stiffly and walks out of the cabin, dark eyes unreadable and hand slowly floating towards his sword as he walks through the door.

“Sidara-“ Lex yells after him, scrambling to his feet and pulling on his breeches, “My friend, wait-“

Sidara does not turn, and when Lex finally pushes his way out of the cabin, Sidara is standing with one hand on his sword hilt and the other on his hip. Someone else is steering, Scarlett, Lex thinks, and on deck there is no one but the captain and the man he had become friends with.

“You. Of course, of all the friends I have had, of all the travelers I have taken across seas, it had to be you,” Sidara just stares out at the rocking ocean, “Alexander Karstark; man fucker.”

“Sidara,” Lex begins. He brought his sword with him, just in case, just in case something happened, in case Sidara decided to rid the earth of one more of Lex’s breed, but the captain does nothing, does not even look at him. “If you could just let me expl-“

“No. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear your excuses-“

“I don’t have any,” Lex says, in a defeated voice that is heavy with the truth of the matter, “I don’t know why I am like this, why he is. I don’t know why the Seven made me this awful thing, why they gave me this curse. All I know is that it is eased by him, that he is all there is for me-“

“Stop. For the love of all that is good, do not go on.”

Lex clenches his jaw, dreading what comes next. Anticipation, dread, worry, it all bubbles up in his throat, slips into his veins and courses through his blood.

He thinks that tonight is the night he dies. Tonight is the night they both die. The night they die at the hands of their friends.

But instead, he gets this.

“I want nothing to do with you after you leave my ship. Your life, your practice, is not right. It is nothing I wish to know about. My crew, they would kill you if they knew, and I thought of any of them, I would be the one to kill you first. But know that you are the last man fucker I allow to walk this earth, only because you were something I once called a friend.”

And with that, Sidara walked away, up to his cabin where undoubtedly Cecily and Ariaa are waiting for him.

For several long moments Lex just stands there, shame filling him. He had a friend. He had a friend in Sidara and now, now he had nothing. Sdara’s words had cut him like a blade, and he felt hollow, his heart clenching as he realized that never, never, would someone ever be a true friend to him again. Not when he fucked a man, not when he loved a man. When he had been with Faugnan, when he had been alone on the Dothraki Sea heading towards King’s Landing, when he had been _normal_ , he had had friends.

But he had not had Viserys.

He sways lightly as the ship rises on waves, closes his eyes and breathes out a sigh of relief because despite all of it- _they are alive, they just have to be careful, but they are alive, they will be okay-_ when at once his eyes snap open and he sees, for the first time in many months, land.

Kings Landing, illuminated by individual, twinkling lights that at this distance, seem tiny, but Lex knows that they are in reality, great bonfires, enormous torches, that there are people everywhere, bustling at all hours of the night. He knew that there were always children running through the streets, always whores pulling strangers into their beds and Lex knew, deep in his bones that it was the complete opposite of the Dothraki Sea.

The Dothraki Sea, was silence, was gaping spaces and turbulent skies and this was cramped rooms and ricocheting noise but somehow-

Somehow it already felt like home.

But Lex had to shake that thought away, because it was not King’s Landing that was home, oh no.

It was Viserys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter I know. Apologizes.
> 
> Updates should be quicker now, as we reach the end of this great and tumultuous journey. Thanks for sticking through it. 
> 
> :)


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on.

As they step off the ship, as their feet meet land for the first time in several weeks, Viserys feels his heart skip several beats.

He has not seen it in years; King’s Landing towers above him, above the harbor. The castle scales hundreds of feet into the sky, flags swaying in the wind and people- _gods_ \- the people.

The Dothraki Sea is nothing in comparison. King’s Landing, the capital, the epitome of Westeros, rumbles and shakes with the feet and the voices of thousands upon thousands of people. They are not hidden, they are not far, they are there, right in front of him.

These, Viserys thinks, as he steps forward, closer to the masses that rush by, merely feet away from him, these are his people.

And he is their king.

He is something they have yet to understand and though they may not accept him at once, though they may not submit beneath his rule, he knows, he _knows_ that they will one day accept him.

Or die.

 

XxX

 

Lex nods to Sidara before disembarking the ship.

Sidara simply walks away, leaving Lex to the pit or guilt that yawns in his stomach. But thank god they are alive, he thinks, as he steps off the ship, going to stand beside Viserys.

“Well,” He asks, his hand crawling up Viserys’s back to rest on his shoulder (this is the most intimate they have agreed to be in public; anything more and Lex fears they would be found out. Viserys said he didn’t care what the people thought, he was their king after all) but Lex’s hands still shake sometimes when he does it, his voice still has to claw its way up his throat from the pit in his gut that has swallowed it, “Is it everything you had hoped?”

“More,” Viserys says, leaning his head back to whisper in Lex’s ear (And Lex freezes, afraid someone might see, afraid someone might _realize_ , but Viserys is so calm and so unafraid.), “Now that I’ve got a Hand who can protect me I can truly be the king I was meant to be.”

“Is that all I am now, a Hand to protect you from harm?” Lex asks, and though it is a serious question he asks it with a light heart. He doesn’t care what the answer is. He knows. He knows. He knows because of the way Viserys is always close to him now, of the way his hands are always close to Lex, the way his body finds ways to press against the Northman’s.

Viserys hums a little, “You are the noblest blooded Night’s Watch deserter I have ever known. You left your home, your bitch of a wife, your life for your absent king and I would be mad to not keep you by my side.”

Lex knew. He knew, deep in his blood that all of those excuses just covered the real meaning behind his words.

“I see,” Lex said, as he pulled Viserys by the shoulder into the crowds, “Then show your new Hand his new kingdom.”

“My kingdom, Karstark. Mine.”

 

XxX

 

It takes them a few weeks to find and purchase a home. It’s small, and dirty, but it has a door that locks from the inside and there’s something nice about it. It smells like dogwood and sea water and beneath all of it is the spiny and haunting scent of jasmine.

They bury the golden hand, or rather, what is left of it, behind the building, so if someone does come in the night and robs them but leaves them alive, they still have it.

Lex loves their home. Viserys admits one morning that it is better than the hut on the Dothraki Sea. And they christen it several times over, whisper secret things in each other’s ears and bite on whatever they can to keep from making too much noise because the door may lock from the inside but Lex is still afraid.

Afraid they will be found out. Afraid that someone will see, someone will hear.

Because Sidara’s words still hang heavy on Lex’s shoulders, and Faugnan’s words, spoken all those months ago, still haunt him and the pit in his stomach where all those words and glances go widens its jaws and Lex can feel the beast that lives inside it breathing-

But when he fucks Viserys and when he loves Viserys and when he sleeps with his arm around Viserys somehow, in those glistening moments the pit closes and Lex feels entirely alive.

But still he locks the door. Still he bites something when he feels like screaming. Still he is not too close in public.

Because they can’t know.

 

XxX

 

For Viserys, not living in the castle he was born to live in is a constant struggle, for the castle itself is large and can been seen from anywhere in King’s Landing.

“Lex, one day I’m going to show you the skulls,” Viserys says one day, while they lie entwined and naked beneath a thin silken sheet as the large torches outside throw flickering light in through the window.

“What were their names again?” Lex asks, and Viserys can hear that he is tired but he doesn’t care as he begins to recite them as he has always been able to.

“Balerion the Dread… Meraxes…Vermithrax…Ghiscar…” Viserys says, his voice soft and low.

He recites them all and when he is done he is surprised that Lex is still awake, still listening. Viserys pushes his fingers between Lex’s.

“Right,” He says, “Your turn.”

Lex rolls his shoulders into the bed and begins, his voice heavy.

“Baverion…”

“Balerion.”

“…the Dead.”

“The Dread.”

 

XxX

 

They meet Barkley after four months of living, without castle or crown. Lex saves him from being mauled by a few castle guards and they become fast friends. Or, Lex and Barkley do.

“I don’t like him,” Viserys tells Lex one day as they weave through the market, looking for nothing in particular, “He smells like fish and cheap whores.”

“He’s a _fisherman_ , Viserys,” Lex says.

Viserys just shrugs, “His wife is stupid for staying with him.”

“Why? Because he smells like fish or because he fucks a new whore every other day?”

“The first one. No, the last one. Both,” Viserys settles for in the end.

Barkley’s wife in question, a portly, strong woman with large eyes named Petra is not a softly spoken woman. She is loudly opinionated and Viserys instantly dislikes her (as he does most women), but for all her loud flaws she is honest.

“I only stay with Barkley that measly, weak fucker because the money is better than I ever could have hoped for,” She told them one night when they had them round for wine, “Growing up where I did, Flea Bottom.”

“And the only reason _I_ stay with this God fearing wench is because despite her mouth she fucks like a sodding dream,” Barkley says, sitting next to her.

They argue more than anyone Viserys and Lex have ever met. And Lex says he likes them and Viserys likes to rant about how much they annoy him so they become the closest thing to friends that they have in King’s Landing.

 

And in the end, they will need them, Petra and Barkley, with their arguing and their boat.

In the end, they will need everything that they have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was surprised by how much I came to love Faugnan. I miss writing her. She turned into a real badass and she was incredibly fun to write. 
> 
> I want to give her presence in these chapters; she was a major part of Lex's life, and in some ways, continues to be one in Viserys's. So I've had the smell of jasmine following them around. It's something I've always associated with Faugnan and even if she's gone, I've tried to give the sense that she is still with them silently judging them from around shop stalls and is probably having herself a great life in King's Landing drinking wine and shaking her head going 'You fucking idiots.'
> 
> Well that's all from me. 
> 
> 2 chapters in two days Emily and you haven't even seen them yet. 
> 
> Shame on you. 
> 
> Bye all!


	20. Crescendo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crescendo is coming...

They spend 5 happy weeks in King’s Landing before living in the shadow of the castle finally gets to Viserys and he and Lex finally start plotting.

“I want my castle back, Karstark,” Viserys says one day, “I want it back because those fucking pigs they call lions should not have my throne.”

Lex looks up from his breakfast blearily and says, “Well how do you intend to get it back?”

“Well I don’t know,” Viserys says, fidgeting, “I was going to conquer Westeros with the Dothraki but that’s out of the question thanks to my whore of a sister. I could have sold my three dragon eggs but she stole those as well. I could find Targaryen supporters, but they would probably not believe I am who I say, as the rumors of my death have spread here. The golden hand isn’t enough for an army and I have no way of earning money fast enough or enough of it to buy an army before I die, or you die for that matter.”

“I’m never going to die.”

“Everyone is going to die.”

“Not me, I’ve got to keep you out of trouble for the rest of eternity.”

“What about when I die then? Will you follow me to the grave?”

“You’ll never die either,” Lex says matter-of-factly.

“How’s that, now?”

“Well,” Lex stands up and walks towards Viserys, his hands moving as he speaks, “Dragons can live for hundreds of years, can’t they? Well, if you have the blood of the dragons in your veins, you should, logically, live for hundreds of years as well.”

Viserys laughs himself silly, clutching at his sides because they hurt so much, “You great fool, Alexander Karstark. My great fool.”

 

XxX

 

Petra and Barkley take them fishing.

Viserys vomits four times over the side of the ship and insults Petra as if it is his only purpose in life. Little did he know that Petra was could return all of Viserys’s venom, with every ounce of vigor. Lex and Barkley watched eagerly, muffling their laughter as the insults grew louder and louder.

“By the Light of the Seven, you ungodly wench, fetch me some water to wash this bile from my throat.”

“There’s your water,” Petra said with a smirk, pointing down at the churning sea, “Although I’m not too sure you’d be wanting to drink from that, now would you?”

“You fucking whore, do as I say!”

“You ungrateful weasel, I shall do as I like.”

“Go fuck a Lannister, and get your mouth gilded shut while you’re at it.”

“If I could fuck a Lannister, do you think I’d be allowing an Iron Islander to lick his way up my cunt?” Petra said, her eyebrows quirking, “I think not.”

Lex and Barkley could not stifle their laughter at the expression Viserys made just then; it was a mixture of confusion, awe and nausea, as he tossed his head over the side of the ship and vomited again.

Afterwards, Lex felt guilt for leaving him alone to his sickness so he went over to stand with Viserys by the railing.

“I hate her,” Viserys mumbled tiredly, “I order you to kill her.”

Lex laughed breathily, “’F’raid I can’t do that. Her husband controls whether we make it home or not.”

“Kill him too.”

“Did you even listen to what I just said?”

“Yes, but I am your king and I order you to kill them beca-“ Viserys never finished his thought, because it was interrupted by him bending over the rail again.

Lex pats Viserys on the back softly, “Oh Viserys…”

“Fuck you.”

 

And later that night, he does.

They fuck all the time. It’s fevered; they’re still discovering each other, still trying to discern if this is real or not. But they love it, love each other even if they don’t always say it, and beneath the banter and the playful prodding that they reserve themselves to among company, sometimes, Lex thinks that others know. That others can see. And it fills him with fear and shame, but some days it doesn’t matter.

Because he has Viserys.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the end finally comes, it is cloaked in flames...

When the end finally comes, it is cloaked in flames.

Amidst the dust and the flame of King’s Landing, dragons unfurl their wings.

Great, hulking beasts. Black, soaring shadows that swoop over the castle, curl their tales around the towering spires as their roaring plumes of flame leave soot and ash along the sides of the walls as the windows are blown out in showering glassy rains.

There is fear. There is screaming in the streets below, people running, taking all they can as the three shadows let their claws scrape over the roofs of their homes, shingles shattering on the ground below.

Viserys Targaryen sees the last dragons and is overcome.

There is fear, of course there is. It is bubbling, it is the kind of fear that makes your heart feel like it has stopped beating entirely.

But over all of that is something Viserys does not know the word for what he feels. It is part excitement, at seeing the beasts of his childhood scraping their wings across the sky, part fear, for himself and for Lex, part confusion.

But above all, there is anger.

“No,” He growls at the sky, “Those are my dragons. Those are my dragons, she took my dragons, I am the rightful king and _that little whore has stolen my dragons.”_

“How did they get here, I thought you said they were all dead!” Lex yells over the screaming in the streets below.

“She hatched them,” He shrieks, “She hatched them, that bitch, that evil little bitch, she hatched them with her fucking savage husband!”

They are with Barkley, in his home with Petra. Petra seems unfazed, but Barkley mutters hurriedly about getting to the boat, about getting out of the capital. They do not hear Viserys and Lex talking, too wrapped up in their own thoughts.

Well, Barkley is.

But Petra is calm as she says, “It’s that Targaryen girl, I say. I’ve told Barkley before, I have: those Targaryens will never die, not when there’s a dragon to be ridden.”

Of course, of all the things Petra could have said to make Viserys’s blood boil over, it was that.

The dragon eggs that had been rightfully his bearing their contents over the city; dragons loose roaring plumes of flame about King’s Landing. One green, lithe and spiny, one white and gold the thinnest of them all. And finally the great black shadow that roars the loudest.

His little sister; come back to haunt him.

 

Lex pulls him from the window by the shoulder, his face raw with fear.

He’s a Karstark, too young to have joined Ned Stark’s rebellion. But he would have heard the stories; of the rabid Targaryen king calling for blood, how he spoke of burning the city with dragon fire.

In the end, Viserys thought, the Mad King got his wish.

“Viserys, we have to go, we have to get out of the city,” Lex yells into his ear. He forgets to use Vaugnan as Viserys’s name, but in that moment they don’t care.

Let them know. What difference does it make?

“We are not going anywhere, those are my dragons!” Viserys yells back, “I am a Targaryen, the last Targaryen, they are my birthright!”

Lex is filled with conviction and terror as he says, his hands firm on Viserys’s shoulders, “They are animals that answer to someone else. Do you think they will listen to you, even hear you out there?”

Viserys stills, listening to the screams, to the crying and the yelling and the roaring collapse of buildings. It is all so deafening.

“Viserys,” Lex says, “Everyone thinks she is the last Targaryen. They think you are dead.”

Viserys pulls his rage tightly back beneath him, “But I’m not! I am the last dragon!”

“Not anymore,” Lex points outside, where a great black shadow streaks across the sky less than a mile away, “I am truly sorry, but we have to leave the city.”

“How are we going to get out? We don’t have a ship!” Viserys yells back, his hand on Lex’s shoulder.

Buildings are already crumbling. Flames are swallowing the capital, one street at a time. The castle itself seems to be the only thing untouched by fire, but then again, if it was Viserys, he would want his palace intact as well.

 _That’s my castle, this is my kingdom, I will have it. Let her break it in for me. Lull her into happiness. I will rip it away, take back my throne, take back my dragons_ , Viserys thinks.

“We’ll take you on ours,” Barkley pipes up, holding food in his arms that he seemingly plans to take with him, “For a price, I’m afraid.”

“A price?! A price, of course,” Lex growls, “Why should we have to pay? We’re your friends!”

Barkley looks ashamed but presses on, “Because it’s my ship. If you don’t like it, find another.”

Lex nods slowly, regarding Barkley coldly before turning back to Viserys, his eyes never leaving his king’s, “I’ll go get the hand. You go with them and wait for me in the harbor.”

“Don’t be stupid! Let’s just kill Barkley and his whore of a wife and take the ship for our own!”

“Do you know the first thing about manning a ship?”

“Well, if Barkley can do it, I’m sure I can learn fast enough!”

“Barkley’s been doing it for years, and you remember, he’s shit. We have to get the hand if we’re to make it out of the city, Viserys, there is no other way.”

“We could stow away on another ship-“

“And be found within a few days and thrown overboard,” Lex curls a hand around the back of Viserys’s head, cradles it for a moment and he smiles slightly. The fires outside are getting brighter, casting burnt light onto his face and Lex savors it.

“Don’t be stupid, Alexander Karstark,” Viserys grabs at his shirt, “Do not be a fool and die and fool’s death.”

“I’m not a fool, Viserys,” Lex smirks, “I’m a Hand. Fires or not, I have a king to protect.”

Viserys just nods, and all the fear dissipates from Lex and he just kisses him there. Barkley and Petra are arguing over whether they should bring the pots or not and the do not see and Lex is not afraid if they do or not.

“The harbor,” Lex says again, “The harbor.”

They kiss in front of an open window, where outside three dragons push King’s Landing into crumbling ashes, and in the harbor, Daenerys Targaryen descends from her ship.

 

XxX

 

That kiss is their goodbye.

 

XxX

 

Lex pulls Barkley aside and tells him, in a loud whisper so it can be heard over the screaming, “If I am not there by the time the first star can be seen, leave without me.”

Barkley, for all his gutless humor, nods stiffly and sadly, shaking his hand firmly and saying, “It has been a true honor, Alexander Karstark.”

“As for me, Barkely… What was your surname?”

“Blacktyde.”

“Barkley Blacktide, you have been a fleeting and loving friend. But do me one last favor?”

Barkley squints as flame bursts onto a nearby building behind them and for a moment Lex thinks that he saw them kiss, heard him say Viserys’s name and the pit opens wider and Lex feels like the shame and fear may swallow him whole. But Barkley just nods and says:

“Anything.”

Lex blinks deeply, draws in a breath and says, “Don’t let him leave the ship.”

 

XxX

 

Viserys Targaryen races through the streets towards the harbor, Barkley in front of him, Petra stumbling along behind.

Petra is not thin. Petra is heavyset and has arms thicker and more corded with muscle than any soldier or castle guard Viserys has ever seen, but her legs are still not strong enough to keep up with the men.

“Come on, you lazy whore!” Viserys and Barkley yell back at her.

Petra fumes and calls to them, “You call me a whore one more time and I swear by the Seven that you will regret it.”

The heat is sweltering. Viserys sweats through his clothes within the first few seconds of being on the streets, pushing through people who are going in all different directions and trying to avoid the fires that spread and swallow and churn. He can feel his skin blistering, burning.

The dragons have gone. Or at least gone somewhere _else_ , because they cannot hear their screeching and flame does not fall from the sky.

When they finally push their way into the harbor and board the ship (A small vessel to say the least, called The Hugari.) Viserys stands at the rail and begins his vigil, thumb against his lip as he whispers quietly into his hand-

_Don’t be a fool. Don’t be a fool._

Barkley, behind him, looks to the sky that is cloudless above their heads, waiting for the stars to show in the slowly darkening sky.

 

XxX

 

His heart beating so fast he is sure it leaves bruises on the insides of his ribs, Alexander Karstark pushes his way through the rising throng of people trying to escape the flames.

And fights to go the wrong way.

Their home is inland, further from the saving sea. The hand is buried behind their home, beneath a pipe that drips dirty water into the mud.

It had all seemed so clever. It had all been so fun.

It had been them sneaking around, loving in secret, living in closeness and they had not hidden from each other.

Lex found himself recalling, in those hasty moments he spent pushing past people who he would never know, about everything they had done.

Of the sunny days on the Dothraki Sea. Of when he cut off Viserys’s hand. Of when Faugnan gave the ultimatum. Of the road from one sea to another. Of all the hiding. Of all the shame. Of all the times Lex had stamped down what he felt, of all the times he reminded himself, and kept reminding himself of Faugnan’s words, of Sidara’s gaze and of all the things he had done to love an absent king.

And he worries for Viserys. He worries that when they get out of the city, onto the sea, the sickness will be too much for him. He worries that he’ll annoy Barkley and Petra to the point where they decided to throw him off the side and Lex will have to go in after him.

People scream at him that he is going the wrong way, but he ignores them, keeping his eyes on the sky, looking for stars and worrying about whether they will leave without him.

As he turns onto their street, wrapped in his thoughts and his small fears his heart falls out of his chest, his breath gone. Fear spreads through his body, he is doused in it, frozen to place and he begins to shake, as he sees what hangs above him.

A bone white dragon with swirling gold spirals, flutters its wings from where it sits on the roof above him, thin teeth clicking together, golden eyes blinking down at him as its scales chink together. They stare at each other, beast and man, for a few heartbeats, before the dragon turns to face him and a rumble begins to brew in its throat.

Lex only has time to think _if only Viserys could see this,_ before the dragon opens its great toothy jaws and flames pool and sizzle about the street, turning everything within it to ash.

And smoke.

 

XxX

 

When the first star pokes a hole in the night sky, Barkley pulls the sails to catch the hot wind the blows off the flames in the city.

“What are you doing?” Viserys screams at him, “He’s not back yet!”

He can’t breathe. They can’t leave without Lex. They can’t leave, Lex is still there, they can’t possibly think of leaving without him.

Barkley is stony faced as he pulls the ship into the sea, “He’s not coming back.”

Viserys storms up the steps, where Petra is waiting beside her husband. She stands between him and Barkley, gaze steely and arms outstretched as if to embrace him.

“Do not presume to touch me,” He snarls at her, “I am Viserys Targaryen, I am your king and you will turn this ship around!”

Petra does not miss a beat, almost as if she knew the whole time and it shocks Viserys how women, as stupid as they seem, seem to know who he is, wherever he goes.

“There’s no kings here, Lord Targaryen,” Petra says, and her voice is all conviction and all sorrow, as she looks beyond his shoulder at the burning city, where people are being reduced to cinders and shadows, “Only queens.”

“No,” Viserys mutters, because his heart is beating too fast for him to yell, “No, turn back, we can’t leave him, we can’t, I can’t leave without him we have to go back.”

“We can’t. The city will be in ashes in an hour, and how long before it is safe for the Unsullied she is rumored to have begin combing the city for Lannister supporters? There is no King’s Landing now, the Karstark boy is dead, surely, as much as it pains me to say.”

“You _will_ turn this ship around or I shall make you,” Viserys says, reaching for his sword.

“You, with one hand? I’ve seen Petra take two guards at once with me at the helm. Viserys Targaryen, if you are who you say you are, your friend ordered me, with your best interests at heart, to leave as the first star appeared. He did this for you,” Barkley said sadly.

“I know that, you fool,” Viserys said, his voice strangled in his throat, and there are tears in his eyes that he tries to control, “But now who’s going to make sure he thinks about himself before others?”

“He’s gone, Lord Targaryen,” Petra says, “I’m so sorry.”

“No…” Viserys says, again and again and again, “No, no he isn’t, no he isn’t, he’ll find me, he’ll find me and we’ll find my army and we’ll make that bitch pay, we’ll…”

He draws in a rattling breath. He can’t feel his limbs. He can’t feel anything.

“We’ll make that bitch pay…”

His knees are shaking, his ears are ringing, eyes are watering from looking at the bright and swallowing fires for too long.

“The King and his Hand, we’ll get the army, we’ll get the army and we’ll…”

His heart quivers. His breath rattles. His chest hurts.

“We’ll…”

He falls to his knees and holds the rail tightly in his hand, so tightly that the skin at the knuckle splits, and a cry tears itself from his throat, while behind him the place where he once stood, is burning.

While behind him, the man that he loves, is burning.

 

 

 

 


	22. Finale

Months pass.

Viserys left Petra and Barkley in small lakes of their own blood. For all their talk at first, for all their allusions to grandeur, they could not stop him. Or rather, they didn’t know what had happened until it was too late.

But he did feel guilty afterwards. Felt watched. He thought for a moment that maybe Lex was watching, was shaking his head and praying for the dead.

But Viserys cast these thoughts away. They did him no good.

So he left them on their ship and took off into the Dothraki Sea. And he went home. Or, to what was left of it.

When he finally found it, months after Daenerys Targaryen had lain waste to the capital, to Alexander Karstark, it was not the same.

That hut on the Dothraki Sea.

It was greyer now, less kempt.

Faugnan had fled, it seemed, gone off in search of something else. Or perhaps she had died. Viserys didn’t care which, but as he opened the door, the low whine the hinges made threw him back to the golden days.

Back to hunting in the bowing grass. Back to Faugnan weaving carpets (Some of them still lay on their sides, fraying on window sills, hanging from the walls.). Back to the pain where his golden hand had been. Back to Vaugnan Tierny, back to shorter hair, back to hiding from the khalasar, back to the pig, the poison and the day they had left it all behind.

His hair is longer now. He’s different. He’s changed.

He steps further in the doorway and breathes in heavily (Even that hurts him. It’s a deep ache. An open wound, still, after so many months.) closes his eyes. He smells hay, dust, old leather, rotting wood, and still, after all this time, beneath it the curling scent of jasmine.

Old smells. Old memories. It hurts. It all hurts. Being back here, without him. Without… Without Lex (The name still gets caught in his throat whenever he says it, like a fishhook. It hurts to say it.). Breathing, even breathing hurts. He aches all the time and it aches even harder being back here.

Everything is covered in dust and dirt, faded and muted beneath the dark brackish color.

But he recognizes things. The bed he slept in. The bed they slept in, that bitch and Lex, the fire pit, dents in the wall Viserys and Lex had put there back when they had sparred together.

And there, lying on one of the chairs is something Viserys thought he would never see again.

A small, wooden horse, carved by hand.

His heart near falls out of his chest when he sees it. He rushes forward, snatches it from the chair, holds it in his hand and stares at it.

He closes his fist around it, closes his eyes in turn as he presses his hand against his lips, eyes squeezed shut and it all comes flooding back to him.

He stands there for several long heartbeats, breathing life back into the ghosts that haunt him, in that hut on the Dothraki Sea, where the red grass bows against the sky and the sunrise opens up endlessly above him, silent and vast and echoing.

**Author's Note:**

> Vaughan, Gaelic name meaning 'small'.  
> Tierny, Gaelic name meaning 'lord of the house'.
> 
> The more you know!


End file.
